
BUDDIE 

AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


ANNA CHAPIN RAY 



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Buddie hailed them affably from the stern of the last one 
in line. 

Frontispiece. See page 127. 


€f)c 25ui«iie 25oofejS 


BUDDIE 

AT GRAY BUTTES 
CAMP 

BY 

ANNA CHAPIN RAY 

M 

Author of the “ Teddy ” Books, the “ Sidney ” Books, 
“Buddie,” etc. 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS BY 
HARRIET ROOSEVELT RICHARDS 


BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
1913 



Copyright, 1912, 

Bt Little, Brown, and Company. 
All rights reserved 
Published, September, 1912 



IPrfntfra 

S J. Pakkhill & Co., Boston, U. 8. A. 


It /.^ 

gCl.A3l993G 


CONTENTS 


Chapter Page 

I Westward Ho ! 1 

II The Wrecking Train 12 

III Buddie’s Artist 23 

IV Gray Buttes 35 

V Buddie Finds a Crony 46 

VI Ebenezer and the Timber Wolf . 57 

VII Lonesome Teresa 70 

VIII On the Trapeze 82 

IX Teresa’s Advent 95 

X Buddie Poses 107 

XI Buddie and Teresa 119 

XII By Canoe and Pony Trail . . . 130 

XIII The Woes of Camp 142 

XIV Indian Bill Comes Back .... 153 

XV Renting 166 

XVI Ebenezer Ousts the Cook . . . 176 

XVII Teresa and Tom 189 

XVIII The Law of the Hunt 202 

XIX A Marooned Teresa 214 

XX Chubbie.?^ 228 

XXI Buddie Eats Humble Pie .... 241 

XXII Till Next Vacation 253 


V 



ILLUSTRATIONS 


Buddie hailed them affably from the stern 

of the last one in line . . . Frontispiece 

It was not according to poor human 
nature to allow the boys to pass by 
unquestioned Page 45 

“ But you promised you would pose/’ he 

reminded Buddie . . . . “ 109 

“ The stones tipped over, and I can’t get 

back without them ” . . . . “ 223 


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BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES 
CAMP 


ANOTHER STORY ABOUT BUDDIE 
CHAPTER ONE 

WESTWARD ho! 

O P the four of them who started off, next morn- 
ing, Buddie was by far the least excited. Not 
that, as a rule, he was of a tranquil nature, given 
to placid boredom. But the edge of his excitement 
had been worn away a little, the night before, first 
when they all had sat around the open fire, discuss- 
ing their summer plans, later when he and Chubbie 
Neal had taken themselves away in the direction of 
bed. It was only in the general direction of bed, 
however. Bed itself was a good two hours away. 
Even when one has never met somebody else till 
dinner time, under some conditions it becomes nec- 
essary to drag out the process of undressing until 
one is quite talked out. 

When at last Buddie was attired in the pink pa- 
jamas which shrieked discordantly at his bright red 
thatch of hair, he let himself down on the edge of the 
bed and sighed contentedly. 

“Well, anyhow, we’ll have the time of our whole 
lives,” he said. “The only thing that worries me is 
Ebenezer.” 


2 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


Deliberately Chubbie untied his four-in-hand. 
Then deliberately he spoke. 

“What’s the matter with Ebenezer?” he asked. 

“He’s got to be crated.” Buddie’s voice was 
disconsolate. “It is sure to be an awful journey for 
him.” Then his disconsolateness yielded to curios- 
ity. “How long have you worn that kind of ties ?” 
he queried. 

Chubbie, known by his unimaginative father as 
Thomas, and nicknamed by his mates because he 
was abnormally tall and thin for his years, ignored the 
question. It was still a sore subject to him that 
inches, not years, had forced him into long trousers 
and their accompanying haberdashery. In the end 
of all things, it would be good to be tall; for the 
present, though, he looked with envious eyes upon 
the sturdy, stocky frame of this red-headed young- 
ster who was to be his summer companion. 

“Why don’t you leave him at home?” he ques- 
tioned casually, after a pause devoted to unbutton- 
ings. 

Buddie, already prone upon his pillow, started up 
again at the question. 

“Ebenezer ?” he said sharply, and the accent was 
one of query, not of summons. 

Nevertheless, there came an answering convulsion 
from underneath the bed. For a minute, the mat- 
tress surged up and down, after the fashion of a ship 
in a heavy sea. A minute later, a monstrous tangle 
of grizzly hair, with a dog inside it,^ came wriggling 
out from under the bed, turned and plunged directly 
on the top of his young master. 

Chubbie, across the room, eyed the monster with 


WESTWARD HO! 


3 


disfavour. His family menagerie consisted of one 
sleek canary, not dogs of Ebenezer’s bulk and frow- 
siness. 

“Oh, I say !” he protested. 

Buddie flung an arm across the neck of his comrade. 

“That’s all right,” he said easily. “He’ll settle 
down, in a minute.” 

Chubbie sought to speak tolerantly; but there 
was more or less of the Thomas in his accent, as he 
said, — 

“Not in the bed, though ?” 

“Of course. He always does. Quiet, Ebenezer ! ” 
For Ebenezer, flat on his back and with his four legs 
turned stiffly upwards, was growling and grovelling 
amid a tangle of the blankets. “He has slept on the 
foot of my bed, ever since he was a little puppy. 
He’d be cold, somewhere else. There ! You see how 
he settles down. He’ll be quiet as a mouse till morn- 
ing.” 

“Ye-es.” Again it was the Thomas who spoke, 
eyeing the small margin of bed remaining outside 
of Ebenezer’s vast dimensions. “But where’ll I 
sleep 

“Where you like. There’s plenty of room, only 
you’ll have to fit yourself in a little. I always do. 
You won’t mind it, after a night or two. Really, he 
lies very still. It would be quite different, if he 
kicked about. But hurry up and get in here. I’m 
sleepy.” 

“A fellow can’t undress himself like a tramp,” 
Tom objected. 

“A fellow needn’t dodder about and be all night 
about it,” Buddie made counter objection. “If you 


4 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


must prink, do it in the morning while I am waking 
up, instead of wasting both our times about it now.” 

In a silence which bordered on the resentful, 
Chubbie slid out of his remaining garments and 
switched off the light. Then, — 

“I don’t prink,” he said curtly, as he tried his best 
to curl his long, lean person about the solid, unyield- 
ing lump of Ebenezer which blocked the exact middle 
of his allotted portion of the bed. 

Buddie recognized the tone and respected it. His 
arm thrashed about vaguely for a minute, then 
clamped itself down across Chubbie’s shoulder. 

‘‘Don’t get huffy, old chap,” he said. “I was 
only joking. Besides, I’ve got red hair; it’s not 
wise to try to fight with me, you know, and I’d hate 
to lick you, especially as Daddy is down on that kind 
of thing.” He chuckled reminiscently. “Remind 
me to tell you how he served me out, the only time 
I ever was in a real row with another fellow. I’m 
too sleepy now. Good night.” And, a moment 
later, the gurgling snores of Ebenezer were the only 
sounds that broke the quiet of the room. 

Next morning, it was Tom’s turn to be sleepy, for 
the night had not been altogether restful. To 
anybody accustomed to having a whole room to 
himself, it was a trifle disturbing to share the bed 
with an Ebenezer who snored and gurgled, and an 
athletic Buddie who thrashed about in his sleep and 
now and then talked a little. Tom was not finical 
in the least ; he had taken a liking to Buddie at the 
start, and their summer together promised to be all 
that was fascinating: horses to ride and game to 
shoot and an Indian reservation in the offing. Still, 


WESTWARD HO! 5 

just that last night before they started on their 
journey, Tom would have preferred to sleep. 

Next morning, though, by the time he had dressed 
and eaten breakfast, sleep was forgotten, and ex- 
citement had mounted high. How could it well be 
otherwise, when this was to be his first long journey, 
a four-day journey that was to end nowhere in par- 
ticular among some mountains where his uncle and 
Buddie’s aunt, their belated honeymoon once over, 
were keeping house in a curious medley of log cabin 
and tent, with another tent next door for Buddie 
and Buddie’s father and himself, to say nothing 
of the hairy Ebenezer who just now was being coaxed 
into a crate with a vaulted roof and patent attach- 
ments for administering food and drink at stated 
intervals ? 

“He hates it; but he is taking it like a little 
man,” Buddie observed over his soup at dinner, 
two nights later. 

Tom made no question. Long before this stage 
of their journeying, he had learned that, on Buddie’s 
tongue, an unmodified He always referred to Eben- 
ezer. In his secret heart, Tom was becoming a 
little tired of Ebenezer, tired of holding the second 
place in Buddie’s interest. To be sure, there was 
Buddie’s father to talk to ; and Dr. Angell was that 
rare being, a grown-up and dignified man who 
knew about boy things and liked them, talking 
about them sensibly and as a man should do, instead 
of trying to pretend he was nothing but a boy, 
himself. Tom loathed grown-ups who tried to 
behave like youngsters. They were silly and they 
bored him. But Dr. Angell talked to him about 


6 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


football and the thing he had done to both ankles 
in a Princeton game, just as if he had supposed that 
Tom knew the difference between a fibula and a 
fandango. Later and on the sly, Tom had looked up 
the new word in his pocket dictionary. He always 
carried the dictionary with him, when he went 
away from home, in deference to his father’s fussi- 
ness as concerned his spelling. 

Yes, all in all, Tom liked Dr. Angell ; but he liked 
Buddie better, and he would have liked to hold first 
place in Buddie’s conversation. Therefore he allowed 
a pause to fall upon Buddie’s remark. 

It was the man at the next table who broke the 
pause. All that day, he had been the man in the 
next section ; and he and Dr. Angell had exchanged 
their morning papers, and then had exchanged their 
opinions of the papers when they gave them back 
again. The boys, though, had paid no especial 
attention to the stranger, beyond discovering vaguely 
that he was remarkably tall and that he had wavy 
hair, grizzly-gray like Ebenezer’s, and a heavy 
grizzly-gray mustache. Buddie, as far as he had 
thought anything at all about him, had thought he 
looked a little haughty and indifferent, and, on that 
account, he was the more surprised, when the 
stranger flung him a smile of downright, utter jollity. 

“He surely is, if you’re talking about the dog I 
saw up in the baggage car, just now,” he said. 
“ What a frisky little beast he is ! ” 

Buddie thawed promptly, less at the smile, even, 
than at the voice. 

“You liked him?” 

“He liked me, and that counted for a good deal 


WESTWARD HO! 


7 


more. The men had him out of his crate; he was 
playing ball all up and down the car, till he saw me 
opening my trunk.” 

“What then?” Buddie queried, for the stranger 
had paused suggestively. 

“There used to be a box of chocolates in the 
tray.” 

In his horror, Buddie dropped his spoon. 

“You gave them to him? But I don’t let him 
eat candy,” he expostulated. 

The man laughed. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t give them to him, though. 
He found them and made off with them, when my 
back was turned. They won’t hurt him any, and 
he really didn’t eat much of the box.” 

“But — But — You don’t mean he stole your 
candy ? ” Buddie burst out, in such evident contri- 
tion that his father felt it wise to come to the rescue. 

“Too bad, Buddie; but the mischief is done, and 
we can’t help ourselves,” he said. “Of course, we 
are very much ashamed of Ebenezer. Still, I’ve a 
good-sized box of ginger in my suitcase ; I was going 
to bring it out, to-night, and perhaps Mr. — ” 

“Kent.” The stranger took his cue quickly. 

“Thank you. I am Doctor Angell of New York, 
and this is my small son, and this is his friend, 
Tom Neal. Perhaps Mr. Kent will come and play 
hearts with us, and help us eat it up.” 

And come into their section Mr. Kent did. He 
ate the ginger, and he played hearts with Buddie 
for his partner, and he and Buddie won. Between 
the hands, he talked with Dr. Angell and the boys 
by turns, until, between them, they found out that 


8 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 

he liked athletics, and could swim three ways : dog 
fashion, and on his back, and just plain forwards; 
and that he was an artist who tried to paint really 
good pictures, only he never, he told them, quite 
could make it out. He liked mountains especially, 
with rough rocks and not many trees. All the 
summer before, he had been in the White Mountains 
near the Notch. This year, he was going — 

“Four to two,” Buddie reminded him sternly; 
“and your play. Let’s see if we can make again.” 

But, before they had time to make again, before 
the words were fairly out of Buddie’s mouth, there 
was a sickening jolt, a rocking of the car, another jolt 
and then a clashing of broken glass, a crashing of 
splintered wood. An instant later, a broken circuit 
left the train in total darkness, a darkness that went 
on swaying and rocking and smashing around them. 
From the family party at the other end of the car 
there came a chorus of short, sharp shrieks; but 
Buddie felt no especial wish to shriek. He merely 
shut his hand on his father’s knee, and tried to 
fight down a horrible wonder about what was 
happening to Ebenezer, in the baggage car ahead. 
Chubbie sat still, too, his teeth shut hard together 
and his gray eyes staring at the noisy darkness, for 
he, like Buddie, had been trained that it was the 
hallmark of a gentleman to take what came, without 
much squealing. And Dr. Angell who, of them all, 
most keenly realized what was their present chance 
of danger, forgot the danger in sheer pride at his 
plucky young companions. 

At last, when the darkness and the chaos had 
seemingly gone on for hours, the rocking stopped. 


WESTWARD HO! 


9 


and with it stopped the crashing. There was a 
minute of stillness; then the car was invaded by 
the sound of voices, accompanied by the wavering 
cones of light from many lanterns. 

“All right in here ?” a man’s voice called, and his 
strong Irish brogue acted like a tonic on the nerves 
of the excited passengers. 

“All right here” and “All right” came simul- 
taneously from Dr. Angell and the father of the 
family at the other end of the car. Then Buddie’s 
curiosity overcame him. 

“What’s happened?” he demanded. 

“Side-swiped by that confounded fast freight,” 
the brakeman told him. “It caught us just on the 
car ahead of us. We’re off the track, all right; 
and it’s a close call you’ve had in here. There’s a 
twenty-foot bank below us, and the forward trucks of 
this car aren’t more than six inches from the edge.” 

Buddie whitened. 

“And the baggage car?” he questioned breath- 
lessly. 

“Oh, that’s all right,” the brakeman reassured 
him. “The trouble is all just here. It might be 
worse; but it’s bad enough. We’ll have to lie here 
and wait for the wrecking train — Hullo I What’s 
this?” 

Sharply he turned the lantern towards the seat at 
Tom’s side. Its light showed that their new com- 
panion had had his own share in the disaster. Dr. 
Angell bent forward suddenly. 

“Steady with that lantern, man!” he bade the 
brakeman. “I’m a doctor; I rather think this may 
be a case for me.” 


10 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


But the stranger artist spoke so promptly as to 
dispel something of the doctor’s fear. 

“It’s nothing,” he said lightly. “My head 
bumped against the corner of the window casing, 
and is cut a little; that’s all.” He lifted his hand 
to his head where a narrow gash showed a red, 
angry line. A minute later, the indifference left his 
eyes, as they rested on his reddened fingers. “Oh, 
I say,” he was beginning feebly, when, all at once, 
his face went very white and he lurched cornerwise 
against Tom’s shoulder. 

Later, after the artist had been laid down at full 
length in the aisle, while Dr. Angell brought him to 
his senses and then plastered up his damaged fore- 
head, and after the artist had opened his eyes and 
abased himself and demanded the right to sit up like 
a gentleman once more, the two boys, retiring to the 
platform to inspect the damage, talked the matter 
over. 

“Well, of all the babies!” Buddie remarked 
disgustedly. 

“It really was rather bad, for a minute or two,” 
Tom suggested. V' 

“Bad, yes. Still, there isn’t any sense in kicking 
up a row,” Buddie made disdainful answer. 

Again Tom sought to lighten Buddie’s disdain. 
Like Buddie, he had felt the stranger’s charm. 
Unlike him, he believed there might be extenuating 
circumstances, even for such unseemly behaviour 
as to faint away. 

“He didn’t make a row, exactly,” he protested. 
“He just—” 

“Funked.” Buddie took the finish of the phrase 


WESTWARD HO! 


11 


to his own lips. “Just fainted plumb dead away. 
Girl-trick, the way they do, when they run up against 
a mouse ! I wouldn’t have thought it of him, 
though; he’s too big and healthy.” 

“Maybe he couldn’t help it,” Tom urged excus- 
ingly. ) 

But Buddie eyed him loftily from the lower step. 

“Could, too,” he said briefly. “Don’t be an ass. 
Chub. Any fellow needn’t faint away, just because 
he cuts his head till it bleeds a little. It isn’t man, 
and it isn’t decent, and it isn’t anything in this 
world but just plain, ordinary coward. I’m ashamed 
of him ; and that’s all there is about it.” 

However, Dr. Angell, out of his professional 
knowledge, would have been the first one to dis- 
agree with his young son’s diagnosis. Unhappily 
for Buddie’s later attitude towards the artist, though. 
Dr. Angell saw no need to discuss the matter with 
his son. The stranger was no patient of his; it 
was not for him to begin an argument in his defence, 
even granted that such defence were needed. 

Therefore, Dr. Angell held his peace. Unfortu- 
nately he had no notion of the weight of scorn which 
that son was heaping on the luckless artist for his 
apparent funk, and consequent turning girl and 
fainting quietly away at sight of blood. Else, he 
might have intervened and rescued the man from 
the Coventry whither, despite Tom’s arguments, 
Buddie summarily had dismissed him. 


CHAPTER TWO 


THE WRECKING TRAIN 


RECKING trains do not grow on bushes in the 



▼ V middle of Nebraska’s plains. Therefore it 
was long after light, next morning, that Buddie was 
wakened by the distant thudding of the rails. 
Remorselessly he waked his father, across the aisle. 
Then he attacked the occupant of the upper berth. 

“Get up, you mole !” he adjured Tom in a sten- 
torian whisper. “She’s coming.” 

“Who’s coming now? G’way !” Tom muttered 
thickly through the swaddling blanket that he had 
wrapped about his mouth and ears in a sleepy effort 
to shut out the growing light. “ Get out, you earnest 
angel, and let me alone.” 

“Shut up!” Buddie accompanied the bidding 
with a sounding slap, for his hereditary name was a 
sore spot in his consciousness, and woe was to the 
person who dared address him by it. 

“Boys! Boys!” Dr. Angell urged, from across 
the car. “Do be quiet. You will be waking 
everybody, and it’s hours and hours to breakfast.” 

“I know that, worse luck, Daddy,” his son and 
heir responded in a cheery whisper that might have 
been heard by Ebenezer in his crate, three cars ahead. 

“Then do keep quiet, and let us sleep away the 
empty hours,” his father besought him, in an an- 


THE WRECKING TRAIN 


13 


swering whisper whose lightness was intended to 
convey to Buddie more than a hint of the proprieties 
of a sleeping car at crack of dawn. 

Obediently Buddie took the hint, and reduced the 
volume of his voice by a good two thirds. 

“All right, Daddy. Only it’s an awful waste of 
time to stay asleep, when a wrecking train is coming 
down the track. Mind it, if Chub and I beat it to 
the scene of action ? ” 

“I mind it, if you talk tramp slang, you sinner,” 
his father assured him promptly. 

Instantly Buddie’s red-thatched head and snubby 
nose poked themselves between the paternal curtains. 
Below them were a pair of clasped and supplicating 
hands. 7 

“Father dearest, may my little friend and I arise 
and go out to play ?” he queried. Then, with a flop 
and a giggle, he landed on his father’s prostrate body. 
“Oh, get up. Daddy!” he demanded. “How can 
we fellows take an intelligent interest in the situa- 
tion, without you to explain things to us? The 
porter says that the car ahead of this is busted to 
smithereens, and the derrick has got to pick it off 
the track and then pick us on. Do get up, and 
watch things happen !” 

In the end. Dr. Angell did get up to watch things 
happen. His motive in getting up, though, was less 
scientiflc curiosity than a general desire to remove 
his young son from the car, before the other, sleepier 
passengers should arise and flay him. The flnal 
impetus came when Buddie once more attacked the 
drowsy Tom, who had gone off to sleep again in the 
upper berth which the two boys occupied by turns. 


14 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


Buddie, behind the curtains and standing on the 
edge of his own berth below, addressed Tom first 
with his garters, then with his voice, lowered, but 
still plainly audible. 

“Get up, you moose !” he ordered. “Hurry up 
about it, too ; but don’t make any noise. Else, you 
might wake the baby.” 

“Baby?” Tom rubbed his eyes in sleepy be- 
wilderment. To the best of his recollection, there 
had been no infant in the car, the night before. 

Buddie answered briefly, but with pointed malice. 
In the section next to Dr. Angell, a long, lank 
artist, wakened against his will, writhed as he 
listened, because the judgements of fourteen are 
crudely merciless. For obvious reasons, the artist 
changed his mind, and decided that he would not 
show himself till time for breakfast. 

The time till breakfast was totally unforgettable 
to Buddie. Like every other normal boy, he 
revelled in excitement, revelled yet more in ma- 
chinery of new and unexpected sorts. With Ebenezer 
at his side. Daddy to explain things and Tom to 
share the thrills, he sat for two long hours upon a 
grassy hummock by the roadside, and watched the 
wrecking crews restore order out of a chaos which 
barely had missed being hideous tragedy. 

As the porter had told Buddie earlier, the sleeping 
car ahead of them had been badly shattered. A 
freight train, backing just too far along its siding, 
had struck it sharply, as it passed. Only the chance 
of an almost empty sleeper had prevented loss of 
life; but that same chance had limited the human 
injuries to the bumped head of their companion, a 


THE WRECKING TRAIN 


15 


bruised nose for a Chicago clergyman whose profes- 
sion forbade him to say what he thought about his 
personal appearance, next morning, and a fit of 
hysterics on the part of the fussy spinster invariably 
at hand in any crisis. 

The car, though, was a sorry sight. One side of it 
was ripped quite open; the forward end of it was 
twisted cornerwise across the track and tilted slightly 
upward, as if it had meant to clamber on the roof of 
the car ahead, but, on second thoughts, had aban- 
doned the attempt. The sleeper in the rear, Buddie’s 
sleeper, had taken the blow indirectly. One corner 
had been crushed in; most of the glass along one 
side was broken, for it had jumped down from the 
rails and gone pounding along the ties for twice 
the train length. However, nobody had been in the 
crushed corner, and no one minded a little extra 
ventilation in the summer time. Besides, the car 
had obligingly stopped before it tumbled down the 
bank, so, all in all, Buddie judged that his first 
railway accident was a grand success : the greatest 
possible amount of wreckage for the slightest outlay 
of personal discomfort. 

Therefore, with Ebenezer at his side, he settled 
himself at ease to watch the process of picking up 
the ruins, while Daddy sat beside him to play the 
part of chorus whenever there was any need for 
explanation. Indeed, it was a lasting wonder and 
delight to Buddie that Daddy always seemed to 
know the how and why of everything that hap- 
pened. Some boys’ fathers were such ninnies. 

But Tom was less mechanical. His interest waned 
before the clamours of his inner man. 


16 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“I say,” he observed at length; “it must be 
getting nearly time for breakfast.” 

Buddie turned upon him frowningly. 

“Oh, I say, Chub!” he rebuked his mate. “A 
fellow can eat breakfast, any day.” 

Tom’s answer came from his heart. 

“I wish to goodness that he could,” he said. 

But Buddie was heedless of his words. With his 
hands gripped nervously into Ebenezer’s topmost 
taglock, he sat with his eyes fixed upon the long 
steel derrick that looked like a huge human finger 
stretching out in search of the best place to grip the 
damaged sleeping car. Buddie’s own car, artist and 
all, had been hauled and pushed off to a side track 
cleverly laid along a bit of level prairie, and now 
the engine and the car bearing the great steel der- 
rick had come up behind the worst part of the ruins. 
Between the engine and the derrick was an ordinary 
flat car that seemed to Buddie rather a useless annex 
to the train. However, all the other things had had 
a use; and he was anxious to see what part in the 
scheme the flat car was destined to play. Therefore 
he forgot his breakfast and ignored the voice of Tom. 

Tom spoke again. Speaking, he took out his 
watch. 

“Almost nine,” he said. “Three hours they have 
been working.” 

“Yes; but look at all they’ve done,” Buddie 
made defensive answer. 

All at once, it seemed to him he was watching the 
work with mind and eyes akin to those of the men 
who planned and toiled before him. If only he 
could squat on his heels beside the derrick, and 


THE WRECKING TRAIN 


17 


govern the fate of nations and their train wrecks by 
lifting up one finger now and then ! That was all 
the chief seemed to do. Indeed, Buddie never 
would have known he was the chief, if Daddy had 
not been there to tell him. He had supposed that 
chiefs must wear badges of oflSce, not sit about in 
shirt sleeves and a slouch hat. However, the man’s 
young, clean-cut face was chief-like, his finger 
pointed with decision and command. Buddie, 
watching him, felt certain that he would not have 
fainted away, the night before. And, in that hour 
beside the track, Buddie cast aside certain imagin- 
ings that had grown out of the facile pencil sketches 
with which he had been wont to adorn his letters 
and the margins of his Coesar, Artists were mani- 
festly poor creatures, and very flopsy. It would be 
better far, far more manly to be the chief who went 
about the railroads, picking up wrecked cars. Later, 
the idea lost a little of its grip on him; but, later 
still, it was destined to bear much fruit. The time 
was going to come, some day or other, too, that 
Buddie would realize that even an engineering chief 
was better off for knowing how to use a pencil. 

But, meanwhile, Tom was lifting up his voice 
again. 

“Why doesn’t that blooming porter give us first 
call for breakfast?” he demanded of the air around 
him. 

It was Dr. Angell, though, who answered. 

“Most likely because there isn’t any breakfast 
to call us to,” he said. 

“Not any breakfast!” Tom echoed blankly. 
“Why, where is it?” 


18 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


‘Tn the dining car.” 

“Of course,” Tom made placid assent. “But 
where’s the car.^^ Down behind our sleeper?” 

But Dr. Angell put one hand into his pocket, 
drew out a gaudy leaflet and opened it to a many- 
coloured map barred with one straight, broad stripe. 

“There,” he said, as he laid his finger on the 
sheet. 

Buddie nuzzled his head between his father’s 
elbow and Tom’s right ear. Quicker than Tom, 
he had been the first to catch his father’s meaning. 

“I see. And where are we. Dad?” he asked. 

The doctor’s finger shifted through a wide arc. 

“Here.” 

“Whee — ough!” Buddie whistled. “And my 
tummy’s flatter than a griddle cake.” 

; “It’s a long run from nine at night till eight, next 
morning,” the doctor told him grimly. “I’m sorry 
now that I advised against two helps of pudding, 
last night.” 

Despite his hunger, Buddie echoed his laugh 
most jovially. 

“I knew you would be. Dad. Still, I suppose I 
shall live through it. It is worse for Chub than me ; 
he hasn’t any extra fat to go on. Honest, though, 
when do you really think we can begin to feed ?” 

I The doctor turned the question over to the porter, 
and the porter prudently passed the query up along 
the line. Finally it reached the shirt-sleeved chief, 
still squatting on his heels beside the derrick. The 
chief detached his attention from the men, now 
making fast certain chains around the car, and 
glanced cornerwise over his shoulder. 


THE WRECKING TRAIN 


19 


“Boys, you say? They are always starved,” he 
told his questioner ; “and it hurts a boy like thunder 
to be hungry. We can’t get a diner down here till 
noon, at the earliest.” He pondered. Then he 
lifted up his voice. “Mike!” 

Mike came running. He was Irish, with a head 
as red as that of Buddie, and a smile like the Cove of 
Cork. The smile was at its widest, when he uttered 
the final “Yis, Sorr,” that ended the swift colloquy. 
Then, still smiling, he drew near the hungry boys. 

“The chief’s compliments,” he said; “and he’s 
just about ready to knock off worrrking and take a 
snack of sandwiches inside that box car, over yonder. 
He was asking if the boys and you,” the smile 
stretched to include Dr. Angell ; “ would do him the 
honour to have a bite with him.” And then, the 
message duly given, he added on his own account, 
“You don’t need to be hesitating any; there’s grub 
enough for fifty in that car, let alone a brace of 
hungry boys.” 

It was long before Buddie and Tom forgot the 
meal that followed. No Pullman-built dining car 
with its brave array of silver and shiny glass ever 
could have seemed to them comparable to the 
cavernous gloom of the box car where they sat about 
on piles of bolts and coils of chain, eating vast ham 
sandwiches and drinking cold coffee out of the one 
tin cup the place afforded. Alternately, while they 
ate, they listened to the chief’s stories of other 
wrecks, and worse ones, or plied him with questions 
as to his reason for doing this or that to this one, 
and as to his plans for the next thing to do, when 
breakfast was an accomplished fact. And the 


20 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


chief, too lately come out of college to have forgotten 
how curious a boy can be in practical details, cut his 
own breakfast short and fed the scraps of it to 
Ebenezer, in order to give himself more time to 
expound the mysteries of his profession. 

Later, after an interchange of cards and good 
wishes, they went their ways : the chief to his 
place beside the derrick, the boys, stuffed with 
many sandwiches and much coffee, to their road- 
side hummock. All morning long, the work went 
on, for the car was cracked to the point of break- 
ing utterly, and needed to be lifted with much 
circumspection. Once, indeed, when the chains 
were well adjusted, it rose a few inches from the 
ground. Then the angle of its sagging warned the 
chief that he must hunt another spot on which to 
grapple it, or else the two ends would part company 
completely. 

At last, though, the new grip was attempted, and 
the attempt made good. The long steel finger of 
the derrick no longer moved about uncertainly. 
Instead, it stiffened, quivered, stiffened, then rose 
upward ; and the load rose with it, tilting to and fro 
a little rakishly, then steadying to the slow, slow 
motion of the powerful arm which more than ever 
seemed a thinking thing, and not a mass of inter- 
locking bars and joints of steel. Slowly the chief 
moved his finger ; slowly the great steel arm followed 
the pointing finger around a half circle towards the 
empty flat car just behind. As it drew nearer the 
direction of the car, the arm lifted a little more, and 
then a little more yet, still turning slowly. An 
instant later, the greater portion of the shattered 


THE WRECKING TRAIN £1 

sleeping car was dangling in the air above the place 
made ready to receive it. 

The chief lowered his pointing finger, and gave a 
slight sigh of relief ; but the strain never left his face 
until, gently as one lays a baby in his cradle, the 
huge mass swinging in mid air was laid, slowly and 
without a jar of any sort, upon the flat car just 
behind the derrick. Then his face cleared, and his 
eyes unconsciously sought the rapt and admiring 
countenance of Buddie, although the only sound 
that broke the stillness was a yelp of agony from 
Ebenezer, who saw no reason that his master should 
throttle him in his excitement. 

The dining car, rushed by a special engine, came 
speeding down the rails just then, and the chief 
accepted cordially Dr. AngelFs invitation to him to 
make a fourth one at their table. To Buddie’s 
mind, after their former eating, the well-ordered 
meal was flattest anticlimax. An even greater 
anticlimax, it seemed to him, confronted him, when 
his father roused him from his absorption in the chief 
to answer the morning salutations of their artist 
neighbour, Mr. Kent. Even reminded of his social 
duty, Buddie bestowed upon the artist a most cur- 
sory attention ; but Buddie’s father was quite insist- 
ent in his greetings. 

“And you really "^find yourself quite all right 
again?” he said, in summing up the situation. 

And Mr. Kent hurriedly bowed his plastered brow 
above his grape fruit, and muttered something 
quite inaudible. He had been quick to catch a 
mocking gleam in Buddie’s eyes, and the gleam had 
reminded him of Buddie’s accent, hours on hours 


22 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


before. Therefore he had no mind to dwell upon 
the questionings of Buddie’s father. He too had 
known just what it was to be a boy ; he still knew that 
the boyish humour, the boyish point of view some- 
times are a trifle merciless. 


CHAPTER THREE 


Buddie’s artist 

T he next night, their last night on the train, 
Tom made a discovery that seemed to him 
thrilling. Dinner over, he imparted the gist of it 
to Buddie. Moreover, being masculine and young, 
he imparted it tersely. 

“He’s going there, too,” he said, when the two 
boys, leaving the doctor and the artist to discuss 
things over their coffee, had escaped to the more 
roomy quarters of the observation car. 

Buddie hesitated as to which end of the mystery 
he should first attack. 

“Where’s there he demanded then. 

“Gray Buttes.” 

“Oh.” For Gray Buttes was their own destina- 
tion. “Well, who’s 
“Mr. Kent.” 

“Hm.” Buddie’s accent was disdainful in its 
note of carelessness. “What of it?” 

Tom looked as if the wind had been taken from 
his sails a little unexpectedly. 

“Nothing, only — I thought maybe — Why, it’s 
a funny chance; that’s all,” he said fiounderingly. 
Buddie maintained his air of bored superiority. 
“ Yes, a strange chance, when this car runs directly 
there,” he observed, his eyes upon the track that 


24 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 

came spinning out, rail after rail, from underneath 
their train. 

Tom felt that it was time to assert himself. 

“He needn’t be getting out, though,” he said. 

Buddie arranged himself comfortably in his chair. 

“No; he needn’t,” he agreed, with a finality that 
was crushing. “In fact, we can get along perfectly 
well without him.” 

“What makes you so down on him, Buddie?” 

Buddie answered curtly and to the point. 

“Baby-gaby !” he said. Then his accent changed, 
grew eager. “I say. Chub, that was a great fellow 
we were talking to, this morning. He knew his 
business through and through. I’d like to do things 
like that.” 

“Things like what ?” the voice of Mr. Kent asked 
over Buddie’s shoulder. Unseen by either of the 
boys, the artist had entered the car just in season 
to hear Buddie’s enthusiastic outburst, and now 
was stowing away his long person in the chair at 
Buddie’s side. 

Buddie spun about to face him, his eyes alight with 
his own enthusiasm. 

“Laying emergency tracks, and seeing just where 
to put on the chains to have them hold,” he said 
alertly. 

The artist smiled in comprehension. From the 
first, he had made no secret of the fact of his interest 
in Buddie. Now he determined, if it were possible, 
to awaken Buddie’s corresponding interest in him. 
All day long, at intervals, his ears and cheeks had 
tingled at the memory of the brief word or two with 
which Buddie had summed up his impressions of 


BUDDIE’S ARTIST 


25 


the incident of two nights before. Coupled with his 
own sense of ignominy, Buddie’s scorn had set the 
artist’s self-conceit to smarting. Instead of pitying 
himself for his bruised head, he merely had a healthy 
consciousness that he had something disgraceful to 
live down. And boyish memories were so very, 
very lengthy, when it concerned what they would 
term a bit of funking. Therefore, Mr. David Kent 
had set himself to work to remove the earlier impres- 
sion that he had created. He judged the best 
method of removal would be the hurling himself 
into Buddie’s interest of the moment. 

“I fancy it’s a thing that comes from a good deal 
of study,” he made elaborately genial reply to 
Buddie’s outburst. “One gets that sort of thing 
out of his training.” 

However, Buddie remained true to his reserva- 
tions. Moreover, upon second thought, he saw no 
reason that this comparative stranger should hurl 
his long, lean self into the talk. 

“Some men are born so,” he made uncompromis- 
ing answer, and the answer was intended to leave the 
clear impression that there were other, lesser men 
who weren’t. 

“Exactly,” Mr. Kent admitted meekly. “That 
is true with most things. However, that man in 
charge of the work, this morning — ” 

Buddie capped his phrase sternly. 

“ — Was a corker.” 

Mr. Kent’s meekness grew upon him. Buddie’s 
accent continued to imply comparisons. 

“I thought he looked a fine sort of man,” he 
assented humbly. 


26 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“You saw him, then?” Buddie’s voice became 
alert once more. 

“Yes. I was in the diner, when you all came in.” 

Then Buddie delivered a final, albeit unconscious, 
blow. 

“Were you? I didn’t remember.” And then he 
stood up and stretched himself. “I say. Chub, let’s 
go and see what has become of Daddy.” 

And the artist, left alone, fell to meditating upon 
the unconscious discipline administered to their 
elders by the very young. It was evident that 
Buddie had no malicious intentions ; he merely felt 
no interest in his adult companion, and he was 
unable to see any especial reason he should pretend 
an interest he did not feel. 

During these latter days, David Kent had not had 
very much of the experience of being disregarded. 
Whatever their effect on strangers, his well-known 
eccentricities had made him beloved of all his cronies ; 
and the fact that his name was signed to a round 
dozen capital paintings was cause enough that the 
strangers, however unappreciative, should turn to 
look after him in the street. Indeed, apart from his 
reputation, he was well worth looking after, so tall 
was he, so slim, so erect and agile. He moved 
with the careless lightness of a boy of the latter 
’teens, not of the man of fifty that he was ; and he 
accepted all his notice with an apparent disregard 
— had accepted it, that is, until Buddie’s calm ignor- 
ing of his value led him to hanker slightly for his 
customary adulation. 

Ten minutes earlier, he had not doubted his 
ability to win the youngster’s liking. The summer 


BUDDIE’S ARTIST 


£7 


was all before them ; for Dr. Angell had been telling 
him, over the coffee, about their plans for summering 
at Gray Buttes. His own quarters could not be 
far from the camp of Brooks MacDougall ; it would 
be quite easy to follow up the acquaintance begun 
on the train. At least, it had seemed to him quite 
easy. Now, he doubted. And he liked the looks 
of Buddie, liked his downright, unmincing manners. 
More than that, he longed acutely to try to work 
him out on canvas. That red head was singularly 
well set on the sturdy shoulders. That snubby and 
prosaic nose was placed between thoughtful, honest 
eyes and a mouth that never kept the same expres- 
sion for two minutes running. As a rule, Kent 
hated portraits. This one, though, would be intri- 
cate, well worth the doing. Half unconsciously 
he pulled from his pocket an envelope and pencil, 
and made a dozen lines to serve as memoranda. 

“Say, now! That’s ripping!” 

Mr. Kent started a little guiltily, as the voice 
came from over his shoulder. The voice was 
promptly followed by a red head, round and sleek. 

“You know it, then ?” 

The red head rubbed itself confidingly against the 
artist’s ear. 

“Rather ! It’s me, just. I don’t see how you got 
it in six scratches and that messy blobble, though.” 

“Buddie,” his father’s voice queried from some- 
where in the rear; “aren’t you a little — ” 

“I suppose so; I generally am.” Buddie spoke 
with serene resignation. Then his accent quickened. 
“But just you come along here. Daddy, and see if 
you much blame me.” 


28 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


And, for the scanty remainder of the evening, the 
artist sunned himself in Buddie’s smiles. 

Bedtime, though, found him once more relegated 
to the background, quite totally eclipsed by the 
superior charms of Ebenezer, with whom Buddie 
had been having his good-night romp, all up and 
down the baggage car. The presiding genius of 
the car did not like dogs; but he did like silver, 
and Daddy’s adult persuasions did the rest. The 
result was that, for half an hour of each evening, 
Buddie and Ebenezer alternately played ball and 
sought imaginary rats amid the luggage, while Tom 
and the baggage master of the moment sat in a 
corner and looked on, with tolerant amusement, 
at their antics. 

Later, that night, their antics ended and Ebenezer 
once more imprisoned in his crate, the two boys, 
shut in behind their green-curtain wall, discussed 
the events of the day in the intervals of their un- 
dressing. 

“I knew you’d like him, once you got to know 
him,” Tom said, as the talk was ending. 

“Like who?” Buddie queried, with a fine disre- 
gard of grammar. 

“Mr. Kent.” 

“Like your grandmother ! Who said I liked 
him?” Buddie sniffed, for he found it hard to step 
down from his hauteur of a few hours before. 

But Tom proceeded to take it out of him un- 
sparingly. 

“You did.” 

“Did not ! You’re dreaming. Chub. I never 
said a word about him, one way or the other.” 


BUDDIE’S ARTIST 29 

Tom become runic. 

“You can say some things, without saying a word 
about them. Anyhow, you did.” 

Buddie sat himself down on the edge of his berth 
and grappled with his boots. 

“Don’t be a silly. Chub. Did what ?” he queried. 
“You sound like Lear, 

Said never a word, 

So far as we heard. 

This frabjous — 

“Did like him.” Chubbie cut in calmly. 

With a sudden jerk, Buddie snapped himself into 
the lower berth which, by all rights, should have 
belonged to Tom, that night. 

“Spos’n’ I did?” he argued tranquilly. “Now 
will you let me go to sleep ; or must I make you ?” 

And it took all of Daddy’s persuasion and authority 
to put an end to the subsequent turmoil. A lower 
berth may offer scanty room for a pillow fight; 
but for all that one can get in harder whacks than 
one would think. Buddie was more muscular ; 
but Tom had had a year of boarding school, and so 
the odds were rather even, after all. 

Next morning, though, brought a new mood to 
Buddie, one more pensive. He seemed to have for- 
gotten the actual journey in anticipations of its 
end. The track no longer interested him, as it came 
sliding out from beneath the observation car, like a 
huge web unwound by a gigantic spider crawling 
across the western plains and up along the western 
mountain passes. He no longer hunted out the 
stations on the time card, nor counted stray coyotes. 


30 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


He even gazed with indifferent eyes upon the Indian 
brave who came to beg at their car window, a 
spectacular brave with uncombed hair and a brown 
patch in the middle of his scarlet blanket. Indeed, 
Buddie went so far as to hint to Tom that he only 
put on his blanket, anyhow, at train time. 

Tom, who had been rejoicing in the blanket, 
glared at Buddie disgustedly. Then he followed up 
the glaring with a question. 

“What’s gone on your temper, Buddie.^ You 
usedn’t to be so plaguey bored. Something wrong 
with your breakfast ; or what 

Buddie shook his head a trifle gloomily. 

“No; breakfast was all right,” he said. “It’s 
only that I’m getting in a sort of a hurry.” 

“What for?” 

“To get there. We’re so near, now, that I want 
to have it over, and see her,” he answered. 

“Her?” 

Buddie’s glance betokened scorn of his friend’s 
comprehension. 

“Aunt Julia,” he said shortly. “Who do you 
suppose ? ” 

“ Oh ! ” Tom appeared to be pondering upon some 
new eccentricity cropping out in the mind of his 
friend. “Is that all ?” 

“Isn’t it enough ?” Buddie queried a bit testily. 

“Ye-es, I suppose so. Without her, you wouldn’t 
be going to camp out, all summer,” Tom told him, 
with exceeding literalness. 

The literalness displeased Buddie. As a rule, he 
was as matter-of-fact as a telephone pole. With 
Aunt Julia, though, it was different. He despaired 


BUDDIE’S ARTIST 31 

of making Tom comprehend the difference. None 
the less, he attempted to explain. 

‘Tt isn’t the camping,” he told his companion. 
“It’s just Aunt Julia, something that makes me 
feel queer, right in here.” 

Here was apparently the seat of Buddie’s digestive 
apparatus. Nevertheless, Tom nodded compre- 
hendingly. 

“I know. I had it, first vacation after I went 
away to school. I didn’t want any breakfast, and 
it seemed to me I could walk ahead of the engine, 
all the last fifty miles. It was my mother. She 
was alive then, you know.” 

“Oh.” Buddie’s eye rested on the band that 
barred Tom’s sleeve. “So that’s it? I didn’t 
know. Same here.” 

Tom nodded. 

“Uncle Brooks wrote me. Horrid; isn’t it? It 
seems as if I’d never get used to knowing she isn’t 
there.” Then, as both boys were obviously ashamed 
of their emotion, Tom had the common sense to 
change the subject. “What’s your aunt like?” 
he demanded. 

For an instant, Buddie ransacked his brain for 
fresh and forcible adjectives. Then he fell back on 
triteness . 

“Corking,” he said. “Only,” he laughed a little; 
“don’t you let her know I called her so. She hates 
slang. Not that she ever lectures you about it. 
She has a way of letting you know things for your- 
self. Once you do know them, though, you do them 
the way she likes ; not because you must, but because 
it’s fun to do the things she cares about.” 


32 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


As Buddie paused in his vague summing up of his 
aunt and idol, Tom struck in with a comment wise 
beyond his years. 

“Just womanish,” he said concisely. And then 
his voice dropped a very little. “That’s the way it 
used to be with my mother.” 

And, in the meantime. Aunt Julia, wife of Brooks 
MacDougall and, in consequence, the great lady of 
the entire little camp, was turning the whole camp 
upside down, in preparation for the coming of the 
two motherless youngsters who were to spend the 
summer in her neighbourhood. To be sure. Dr. 
Angell was nominally in charge of them ; and 
Ebenezer would protect their goings out and their 
comings in. None the less. Aunt Julia felt herself 
directly responsible for the comfort of the summer 
and for the summer’s fun. It was she who had 
coaxed her engineer husband to allow their pro- 
tracted honeymoon to be disturbed by Buddie’s 
advent, she who had insisted that the disturbance 
be increased by her husband’s nephew, Tom. It was 
she who had promised to see to it that the boys 
neither broke their necks on the one hand, nor died 
of boredom on the other; she who had bullied and 
cajoled the respective fathers into full agreement 
with her plans. 

Tom’s father had been ready to agree with any- 
thing. He was a busy man; as yet, he had not 
become too much accustomed to having the sole care 
of a boy whose tricks and manners were not always 
like those of the archangels and their seraphim. 
He had drawn a deep sigh of relief and thankfulness, 
when he had read Aunt Julia’s letter. Next morn- 


BUDDIE’S ARTIST 


33 


ing, in hot haste, he had sent an emphatic telegram 
of acceptance. It was always well to clinch a good 
thing when it was offered. 

But Buddie’s father, on the other hand, had 
haggled basely over the terms of the invitation. It 
was only five months that he had had Buddie to 
himself again, after a nine-months separation made 
needful by his own dubious health. No other 
comrade in the world was quite so dear, so necessary 
to his happiness as was that same Buddie ; he could 
not face another separation quite so soon. 

At heart. Aunt Julia shared his attitude to Buddie, 
and the sharing made her tolerant of any possible 
upsetting of her plans. She amended her original 
form of invitation swiftly. Tom could come to 
them, if he preferred. As for her half-brother, 
why should he not come, too, and have a separate 
camp for himself and Buddie and for the omni- 
present Ebenezer ? Tents and cots were the easiest 
things to get, in that country. Even she might be 
able to manage a chair or two and a home-made rug, 
if they were very finical. Their meals, of course, 
they all would take together in the oflScial dining- 
room which, she hastened to assure him, had slab 
sides and a tar-paper roof which leaked a little in 
bad storms. However, the cook was a Belgian, and 
moreover he knew how to move his stove from one 
corner of the cookhouse to another, when the wind 
went wrong. They would not starve, by any means. 

In the end, after much interchange of persuasion 
and argument. Dr. Angell accepted this modified 
plan. Later, it was decided that Tom should live 
with Buddie in the smaller tent, for Dr. Angell was 


34 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


a firm believer in the theory that boys, to be healthy, 
needed other boys. And now, all those last two 
days. Aunt Julia had been toiling with her own hands 
to make the simple quarters homelike and attrac- 
tive for her coming guests. 

The train was already whistling in the distance, as 
she added the finishing touches to her work. How- 
ever, she had time enough to shake down her ruffled 
plumage and to stroll the short length of the street 
to the station platform, while the engine came 
puflSng up the last stretches of the grade. There 
was no need for her to hunt the windows over for 
a sight of the familiar boyish face. From far, far 
down the track, she saw a soft hat waving madly, 
heard above the puffing, groaning engine, a voice 
shrieking in exultant salutation, — 

“Whoop — ee — la! Aunt Julia! He’s in the 
baggage car, as natural as life, and twice as hungry.” 

The train came to a halt at last ; Dr. Angell stepped 
from the car and greeted her, then introduced the 
tall, lank boy who followed him. The tall, lank boy 
greeted her with a grace which arose, as she learned 
later, more from shyness than from any especially 
elaborate sense of decorum. She had but an instant 
to take note of him, however. The next instant 
Tom was thrust aside, and dainty, immaculate Aunt 
Julia vanished inside a tempestuous embrace of 
rough boyish arms and sooty, shaggy paws. 

Buddie and Ebenezer had by no means lost their 
memory of their nine months in Aunt Julia’s heart 
and home. 


CHAPTER FOUR 


GRAY BUTTES 

I T was not until the next afternoon that the boys 
found leisure to make a thorough exploration of 
their new quarters. The sun had been setting, 
when they had left the train; that, in the long 
summer twilights, meant that it was growing late. 
There had been just time to drop their luggage in 
their sleeping tent and to wash off a little of the 
surface of the dust accumulated in the train, before 
Aunt Julia had sent a man to summon them to 
dinner. And such a man, with a cook’s linen coat 
and pinafore above a pair of service putties ! And 
such a dinner ! The countless “fixings” of the 
dining car seemed to the boys as futile as tissue- 
paper roses, while they stared hungrily at the smok- 
ing-hot pea soup and at the monster salmon trout 
that followed it. Then, to finish off, there was a 
pie, no finicky little tartlets, but a great, thick, 
fruity pie to be cut in wedges, after the fashion dear 
to boyish hearts. Moreover, out of deference to 
Buddie’s appetite and for fear he would be lonesome, 
eating by himself, everybody took a second piece, 
everybody, even Mr. Kent. 

It had been largely Daddy’s doing that Mr. Kent 
had been asked to dinner with them, that first 
night. After Buddie’s tempestuous greeting had 


36 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


spent a little of its fervour, Daddy had brought the 
artist forward and introduced him to Aunt Julia, 
as a fellow traveller of theirs and a prospective 
fellow townsman of her own. Aunt Julia, with the 
ready tact which always had been her greatest 
charm, had remembered quickly that she had heard 
an artist was expected to spend the summer at Gray 
Buttes. He was to live in the last shack in the 
town, down towards the hills ? Yes, it was a charm- 
ing situation. And take his meals at the hotel ? 
She smiled a little. He would find the Meteor not 
quite the Carlton. By way of letting himself down 
gradually, wouldn’t he dine with them, that first 
night? He could send his luggage on ahead, and 
it would be quite safe. And, as she gave her invi- 
tation, Aunt Julia smiled with a sunny persuasive- 
ness which appeared to be totally unconscious of 
the glance of approbation Daddy bestowed upon 
her. 

Buddie, however, frowned. He would have pre- 
ferred to have the dinner quite a family function, 
given over to reminiscence and to bringing his 
aunt up to date regarding Ebenezer’s late achieve- 
ments. Instead, they had to sit in a row and talk 
about things that were not too vital in their interest : 
the journey, and pictures, and whether the engineer- 
ing camp would stay there, all summer, or move on to 
Moosehead, forty miles away. Once, for a minute, 
Buddie got the talk into his hands and started to 
tell his aunt about the accident. Tom, however, 
promptly began to kick his shins ; moreover, he kept 
it up till Buddie, perforce, fell silent. At bedtime, 
though, Buddie took his revenge. 


GRAY BUTTES 


37 


“Now will you kick my legs another time; or 
will you not?” he demanded, as he lifted up one 
corner of the pillow on which he had been sitting. 

Tom’s scarlet face appeared to view beneath the 
corner. 

“Get up, you elephant! You walrus! Get — 
up !” With a scientific convulsion, he dislodged 
Buddie and sent him rolling prostrate on the floor. 
“I kicked your shins, because Mr. Kent looked so 
blamed uneasy, like a cat with his front foot in the 
cream. You shouldn’t slang a man inside your own 
front door.” 

“I wasn’t slanging him, and it isn’t my front door, 
anyhow.” Buddie sat up, and shut his hands about 
his sturdy ankles. 

“No; but it’s your aunt’s. That’s the same 
thing.” 

“’Tis not. It’s your uncle’s. Besides, I wasn’t 
saying a thing about Mr. Kent.” 

“He didn’t know that, though; and he looked 
queer. Honest, Buddie, I think he’s a good sort of 
chap, even if he did go off into a fainting fit.” 

Buddie’s reply was conclusive. 

“Men don’t.” 

Tom was more charitable. 

“Depends on the man. Besides, I asked your 
father.” 

“When did you ask him ?” 

“Next day, while you were so taken up with your 
man in the wrecking train.” 

“What did he say?” 

“Said Mr. Kent couldn’t help it. He was made 
that way. Some people are.” 


38 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“Precious poor piece of workmanship!” Buddie 
commented shrewdly. 

“No matter. It shows he wasn’t the one to 
blame, shows he didn’t funk.” 

Reluctantly Buddie suffered himself to modify his 
point of view. 

“Well, if Daddy said so — ” 

“He did.” 

Buddie dropped the major issue. 

“Anyhow, he can draw. Did you see that China- 
man, shinning up a drain pipe? You could fairly 
hear him puff. Still, I’d rather have had Aunt Julia 
to ourselves, this first night.” 

Tom promptly struck a nail upon the head. 

“Maybe Uncle Brooks feels something the same 
way about us.” 

Nevertheless, there had been nothing in Mr.^^Brooks 
MacDougall’s manner to suggest this feeling, while 
they sat at dinner. There was nothing at all sug- 
gestive of it, next morning, when he asked the boys 
to ride out with him to inspect the work of the new 
railway. Daddy and Aunt Julia could go for a 
drive together, if they chose; but he had had his 
eye on a capital little pair of mustangs, and he 
wanted to see the boys astride them. A half hour 
later, the two boys were astride, and, bouncing rather 
wildly in their saddles, were following Mr. Mac- 
Dougall up a trail that, to their unaccustomed eyes, 
appeared to be all high, and not any wide at all. 

However, Budge and Toddie, as the mustangs 
called themselves, were as sure-footed as they were 
full of mischief. Quick to know that their new 
riders had never bestridden anything more active 


GRAY BUTTES 


39 


than the things one finds in a gymnasium, they put 
their shaggy heads to work to make the ride a lively 
one for their young masters. Somehow or other, 
though, the boys hung on, not always gracefully, 
but with a sturdy determination that outweighed 
grace entirely. Once, Buddie nearly took a header 
into a heap of gravel; once Tom forsook his saddle 
absolutely and, for a good half mile, rode gripping 
Toddie with his knees and heels, and hanging gamely 
to his mane. Needless to say, they were stiff and 
breathless when, after seemingly endless miles, Mr. 
MacDougall negligently flung his leg over his mount 
and, sitting sidewise on his saddle, offered his con- 
gratulations. 

“You’re all right,” he told them heartily. “I 
thought I might as well try you out, at the start. 
Like the ponies.?^ They are jolly little beasts, full 
of impishness as a pair of puppies; but they aren’t 
ugly, and they’ve been broken not to be afraid of 
anything the mountains have to show them, from 
dynamite to dragons.” 

“Do you have them up here?” Buddie queried, 
from the midst of investigations concerning the 
muscles of his left leg. 

“Sometimes we think so, when they pull up our 
stakes to use for weapons in their scrimmages,” 
Mr. MacDougall answered. “They’re a long way 
more picturesque in the Sunday supplements than 
in real life, for all their blankets and bead trumpery 
that they bring out to show off to the stranger.” 

“Oh, Indians! Are there some about here?” 
And Buddie promptly lost all interest in the problem 
of his muscles. 


40 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“Any amount of them, and ugly ones, too. You 
see, we are near the corner of a reservation, and 
the beggars have got the notion in their heads we 
mean to oust them, if we can; to get the better of 
them, if we can’t quite oust them. They are a crazy 
lot.” 

“We saw them, coming out,” Tom volunteered, 
cutting short his conversation with Toddie whom 
he had adopted on account of their sharing the same 
initial. 

His uncle laughed. 

“Clad in their newest blankets and belted with 
wampum ? That’s the way one does see them, from 
the trains.” 

Buddie cast a glance of triumph upon Tom. 

“How do you see them. Uncle Brooks ?” he asked, 
with a quietness which veiled a hint of malice. 

“Oh, dressed like any other navvy, only a trifle 
shabbier : bunchy coat and ragged trousers and bad 
boots. Generally he has a pipe.” 

“Feathers in his hair.?^” Buddie queried, with 
unabated interest and innocence. 

Again his uncle laughed. 

“Not outside of train hours, or the Sunday 
papers,” he replied. “He prefers an old slouch hat, 
when he can get it. When he can’t, he makes a 
cracked-top derby do.” 

“Exactly,” Buddie assented. Then he asked 
gently, “What’s the matter. Chub? Anything 
wrong with Toddie’s mane?” 

However, Budge, just then, decided he would 
dance, and Tom’s response was lost in the general 
excitement. Before Budge had decided once more 


GRAY BUTTES 41 

that his front legs were made to stand on, Mr. 
MacDougall spoke. 

“There come half a dozen of them now,” he said. 
“You can see for yourselves, boys, whether I have 
told you the truth, or not.” 

Forgetful of their ponies, the two boys wheeled 
about and stared in the direction of the pointing 
finger. As they stared, bit by bit there fell away 
from them the memory of one picture cherished 
from their tiny childhood, the picture of a stalwart 
brave, glum and grim, standing erect and tall, his 
bare arms folded underneath his graceful blanket, 
his haughty head crowned with an upstanding 
wreath of feathers, toll of the fallen eagle’s wing. 
And these ! Were these those ? 

It was Tom who broke the silence, and disgustedly. 

“I say. Uncle Brooks, let’s be getting home,” he 
said. “It must be almost time for luncheon.” 

“How do your legs feel about it, Buddie?” Tom 
queried confidentially, that noon, as the two boys 
followed their elders in to luncheon. 

Buddie gave an experimental stretch. Then he 
suppressed a little groan. 

“Blasted,” he said succinctly. “How’s yours?” 

Tom made no effort to suppress his groan. 

“Next time. I’ll put a pillow on the beast’s ridge- 
pole, or my name’s not Neal,” he answered. “ Buddie 
Angell, do you think we ever can get used to it?” 

But Buddie was always optimistic by nature. 
His optimism came out strongly now. 

“I s’pose we’ll get a little callous, in the course 
of time,” he said. 

Luncheon, however, brought forgetfulness of 


42 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


minor details like stiffnesses and blisters and the 
like; and it was with energetic enthusiasm that, 
luncheon eaten, the two boys started out to explore 
their new domain. Already they had grown a 
little bit accustomed to the MacDougall end of it : 
to the long, narrow shack of slabs and cleated layers 
of tar paper, a shack that was chiefly windows on 
the sides and wholly fireplace at either end. One 
end of it was bedroom, furnished very simply and 
without any of the ivory and silver trumpery which 
always had aroused Buddie’s disgust in his Aunt 
Juila’s room at home. There were two comfortable 
easy chairs, though, and one good picture; but the 
fireplace was the great thing of the room, a fireplace 
so huge that one could put in a whole round of tree 
trunk without splitting. A similar fireplace filled 
the entire end of the living-room, which was larger 
and fitted up with lounging chairs and wicker tables 
and an enormous couch with the skin of a grizzly 
bear thrown over it. Ebenezer had taken to the 
bear on sight; it required a good deal of argument 
to convince him that a real grizzly, shot by Mr. 
MacDougall’s own gun, must be treated with more 
respect than a mere common skin bought in a rug 
shop. Indeed, up to the very end of summer, Eben- 
ezer had his doubts upon the subject, doubts that he 
manifested most strongly when he found the living- 
room given up to himself alone. 

Close by the home shack and a little apart from 
the main engineering camp was the official dining- 
room with its cookhouse close behind, leading to the 
other dining-room, the one for the men, hidden 
somewhere in the rear. The staff dining-room had 


GRAY BUTTES 


43 


two tables, one for the minor officials, the other, 
quite apart, for the MacDougalls and their clan. 
Buddie already was gazing upon the occupants of 
the smaller table with admiring eyes. The topog- 
rapher was Psi U. and a Bones man, and he had hair 
redder than Buddie’s own. Buddie felt that they 
were predestined to be friends. 

For the rest, beyond a gun or two and a few trophies 
of the hunt, the dining-room was bare of ornament ; 
but, three times a day, the tables held food which 
caused Buddie to regret that his inner man was not 
cut on the pattern of Goliath of Gath. Besides, it 
is a fact, melancholy, but distinctly true, that the 
average healthy youngster cares little for embroidery 
upon his table linen. As for Tom, he was at the 
epoch when he measured all things by the standards 
set by his boarding school ; and boarding schools, as 
a rule, do not go in too much for elaborate daintiness. 

The tent where Dr. Angell and the boys were 
supposed to live, was six hundred feet away from the 
MacDougall home. Judged by the standards of 
Gray Buttes, it was quite a magnificent affair, for 
it had a board floor and was partitioned off into 
three rooms : one for Daddy, one for the two boys 
and Ebenezer, and a third which alternated between 
holding a portable tub and a vast heap of towels, 
and being set forth gayly with a table and three 
chairs. A long-tailed Chinaman in a blue jacket 
accomplished the alternations ; his joy was unspeak- 
able, when he had topped the table with a scarlet 
cover and a huge brass lamp. The second night, 
he added an array of smoking joss sticks ; but the 
doctor, strangling violently and trying in vain to 


44 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


look the pleasure that he was far from feeling, bade 
him reserve that final luxury for some more festal 
time. 

In this magnificent establishment, the doctor and 
the boys and Ebenezer were supposed to live. As 
a matter of fact, from the hour of their arrival, they 
lived either out of doors, or else in the MacDougall 
shack, and only went home to sleep. Moreover, 
Aunt Julia’s thoughtful provision of the tub became 
as much a matter of pure theory as did their living- 
room which shared accommodations with it. On 
the second morning of their stay, Buddie discovered 
a deep, still pool in the river that flowed down 
across one end of the little town. The morning 
after, a procession of four might have been seen 
marching towards the pool. Three of the four 
carried towels; the fourth was Ebenezer, hating 
baths on principle, and going along to see what the 
others meant to do about it. From that time for- 
ward, the procession took place daily ; and, in time, 
the portable tub was filled with straw and devoted 
to the mid-day naps of Ebenezer whom it fitted to 
perfection. 

The river flowed down, straight from the moun- 
tains, across one end of Gray Buttes street ; then, 
bending sharply, it went sliding along beside the 
street, chattering noisily as it passed certain pebbly 
stretches in its shallow bed. Below the town, it 
took another turn, then aimlessly turned back again 
and finally lost itself in the narrow canon that wound 
away into the mountains to the northward. 

Just in the first bend of the river, just where one 
gained the first real look into the canon, the single 



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GRAY BUTTES 45 

street began. There was not much street about 
it, merely a rutted road and two trodden lines of 
sidewalk which led from the end house of the town 
through the business centre of Gray Buttes, and on 
to the engineering camp quite at the southern end. 
There might have been nine houses in the whole of 
it; and the business centre held, in addition, the 
railway station and the Meteor Hotel. The post 
office was in the station ; the hotel office answered 
all the purposes of country store. All in all, the 
little town was as self-contained as a city apart- 
ment house, and just about as narrow in its dimen- 
sions. Nevertheless, the two boys, with Ebenezer 
at their heels, were the whole afternoon exploring 
it. The inhabitants saw to that. It was not accord- 
ing to poor human nature to allow the boys to pass 
by, unquestioned and unquestioning. By dinner 
time, Buddie and Tom could have passed with 
honours an examination concerning the name, the 
occupation and the especial hobbies of every man, 
woman and child within the town. 

“I say,” Buddie remarked contentedly from 
between the sheets, that night; “I do believe we 
are going to have a great old time of it, this summer.” 

“It sure looks like it.” Then Tom paused before 
blowing out the candle, paused and looked at Buddie. 
“When do you suppose we’ll get over being stiff 
in all our joints?” he queried. “I feel exactly like 
a wooden doll.” 

Buddie yawned till Ebenezer, already snoring on 
the bed, appeared to be in mortal danger. Then, — 

“I’d forgotten all about it,” he said negligently. 
“Anyhow, it was awfully worth while.” 


CHAPTER FIVE 


BUDDIE FINDS A CRONY 

T hree days later, Buddie’s sense of humour 
began to reassert itself. At home in New 
York, and even in the gentle decorum of Aunt Julia’s 
domestic atmosphere, Buddie had not been exactly 
what one would term a meek and quiet spirit. 
Indeed, measured by some of his more unregenerate 
achievements, his hereditary name of Ernest Angell 
showed itself to be a palpable misnomer. The worst 
of it all was that one laughed at his performances, 
no matter how much one might deplore them. 
Buddie was used to being lectured for his many 
sins; but he had learned to ignore the stern lips of 
the lecturer, and to fix his gaze upon the eyes, in- 
stead, ready to catch the first dawning of the twinkle 
that never failed to come. 

However, since the morning of their starting 
from New York, Buddie had behaved in most 
exemplary fashion. This was by no means the 
result of dawning conscience. It was merely that 
the problems of Ebenezer’s transportation, coupled 
with the exciting events of the journey, had left him 
no leisure to set his inventive faculty to work. His 
first railway accident, his first live Indian outside a 
circus tent, his first acquaintance with a construc- 
tion camp : these things were enough to keep his 


BUDDIE FINDS A CRONY 


47 


mind absorbed and temporarily quiescent. Still, 
Buddie was Buddie; such an abnormal state of 
grace could not be lasting. By the end of the third 
day, he was casting about in search of mischief. 

To his surprise and disappointment, no inspira- 
tion came to his brain, customarily so fertile in 
plotting small iniquities. Indeed, that was the 
trouble. Everything he could think of seemed so 
very small, in comparison with the magnitude 
of his surroundings. 

“That’s the whole real row,” he explained at last 
to Chubbie, whom he had been driven to take into 
his confidence. “Things that seem funny as any- 
thing, inside a house, go flat when they have all out- 
doors as backing. Can’t you think up something 
rousing, Chubbie, something to make this camp 
sit up?” 

Chubbie pondered. 

“In our school,” he was beginning, at last; but 
Buddie cut in, — 

“Stow that, Chubbie!” 

Tom’s countenance expressed surprise. 

“What’s the row?” 

“That everlasting our school of yours,” Buddie 
said warningly. “I’m getting slightly sick of hear- 
ing how you did things there. Next time you say 
one word about it, Chubbie Neal, I treat you the 
way Teresa used to treat old Rosa.” 

Chubbie looked interested. He liked things 
feminine. 

“Who was Teresa?” 

“The finest girl I ever saw, good as a boy, any 
day.” 


48 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


Tom silently digested the slight implied by 
Buddie’s accent. Then, — 

“ Who was old Rosa ? ” 

“Her chum,” Buddie made answer. Not for 
worlds on worlds would he have confessed to any 
other boy his secret interest in the venerable doll, 
chastised by Teresa in the hours of agony when her 
world went wry. 

“Oh.” 

“ Yes, oh ! ” Buddie returned conclusively. “ Well, 
anyhow, what are we going to do?” 

Tom put his fists into his pockets and spoke with 
brief decision, for he had a general idea that it would 
be best for them both, if Buddie should be tempora- 
rily deprived of his society. Buddie was getting 
dictatorial, what Tom termed ‘bossy.’ Therefore, 
the best medicine for him would be the being thrown 
upon his own resources. In planning out his chas- 
tisement, however, Tom had no notion whatsoever 
whither Buddie’s own resources were about to take 
him. Wherefore, — 

“I am going fishing,” he announced. 

To his extreme surprise, Buddie’s answer held 
neither regret nor pique. 

“Go on, then. See you at dinner.” 

Then, his hands also in his pockets, he went tramp- 
ing down the dusty road with Ebenezer at his 
heels. 

Ebenezer, in those first days in the camp, was 
growing fat from want of exercise. The boys spent 
a good share of their time in learning to stick upon the 
agile backs of Budge and Toddie; and Budge and 
Toddie frisked along the roads too fast to ma.ke it 


BUDDIE FINDS A CRONY 


49 


possible for Ebenezer, gorged on the debris of the 
camp table, to keep up with them for ten steps at a 
time. Accordingly, Ebenezer had sat at home and 
increased in fatness until, that noon, Buddie had felt 
called on to remonstrate, first with the cook, and 
then with Ebenezer. 

This very afternoon, Buddie had put his foot 
down flatly : Ebenezer must not have his gallon bowl 
of scraps filled up but once a day; and Ebenezer 
must come out and take his exercise like a man, not 
lie in the sun like a soggy feather bolster. He 
gathered up Ebenezer ’s base-ball, and Ebenezer ’s 
small rubber ball, and whistled in a fashion which 
announced to the slumberer that he would have no 
shirking. However, Ebenezer was a creature of 
strong will; and his present will was to split the 
difference between his own plan and that of his 
master. He would go to walk, if need be; but a 
dog of his present fatness would not consent to run 
for a ball, so soon after his luncheon. He went 
trudging down the road at Buddie’s heels ; but only 
an apologetic convulsion of the taglock of hair 
which answered for a tail betokened any conscious- 
ness of the balls spinning down the road ahead of 
him. Buddie could run after them and pick them 
up, if he chose. He had not lunched from a small 
mountain of assorted goodies, and then washed the 
small mountain down with a quart of milk. 

Buddie, marching down the road towards the 
entrance to the canon, was chewing hard the cud of 
a great discontent. Like most of us, cloyed with 
goodies, he was finding life a colossal bore. Two 
weeks ago, he would h^ve considered any one of a 


50 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


dozen present interests enough to add spice to a 
whole week’s existence. Now he took them as a 
matter of course, and demanded further interests 
of some new and exotic kind. Tom’s desertion had 
not vexed him in the least. He liked Tom ; but his 
liking was a temperate one. His happiness in no 
way was dependent upon Tom’s society. But, with 
Ebenezer, it was different. He had learned to 
count on Ebenezer’s enthusiastic interest in every- 
thing that went on about him ; it was a new experi- 
ence to find him bored and self-absorbed. Buddie 
liked it the less because, quite without his realizing 
it, the dog’s mood was so exactly like his own : they 
both of them were seeking to digest too many 
agreeable novelties. 

“Now, Ebenezer,” he argued emphatically, as 
they drew near the end of the town’s single street; 
“you must brace up and act a man. There is no 
sense in your being so lazy. See that ball ? 
Well — ” the ball went flying down the road — 
“s — sic — c — c — c it !” 

To Buddie’s manifest relief, Ebenezer obeyed his 
master’s admonition and, regardless of his recent 
f eastings, went flying down the road behind the ball. 
Unhappily, Ebenezer had grown clumsy with much 
dining, and no longer possessed his old-time agility 
in dodging. Unhappily, too, somebody undertook 
to cross the road just in the path of the flying ball 
and the equally flying dog, a tall, thin somebody 
beneath whose boyish cap there showed a rim of 
grizzled hair. 

“Hi, Ebenezer!” Buddie clamoured, as he saw 
the collision waxing imminent. 


BUDDIE FINDS A CRONY 


51 


But Ebenezer, apparently rejoiced to find that, 
after all his feasting, the muscles of his legs were still 
in working order, refused to Hi, and went pounding 
forward, regardless of possible collisions. A moment 
later, a tall, thin figure was arising from a gutter 
and seeking for the jaunty cap which should have 
concealed from view the tousled condition of his 
grizzled hair. Buddie, meanwhile, was hovering 
in the offing, trying to keep down his merriment 
long enough to offer the proper apologies. 

To his relief, the victim broke the silence. 

“That dog of yours is no light-weight champion,’’ 
he remarked, as soon as he could get his breath. 
“I couldn’t stand up against him, anyway; he took 
me squarely, just under the knees. Come along, 
old man, and shake hands on getting the best of a 
fair fight.” 

And Ebenezer came. His manner was a bit self- 
conscious, and his apology for a tail wagged in 
feigned contrition, as he drew near. But his lips, 
although distended around some precious bit of 
booty, were smirking in a fashion that betrayed his 
pleased surprise at his own achievement. 

“What’s in your mouth, old man?” the artist 
queried, giving over his search for the missing cap 
long enough to pull Ebenezer’s ears in token of 
forgiveness. 

“It’s his ball,” Buddie explained, for it seemed 
to him a prudent moment for entering the conversa- 
tion. “He loves to play ball; he was rushing after 
it, when he upset you.” 

“I judged he was in a hurry about something,” 
Mr. Kent responded gravely. Then his eyes met 


52 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


Buddie’s, and they both roared. Indeed, no man, 
however bumped and tousled, could have withstood 
the mirth in those gray eyes of Buddie, could have 
held out against the infection of his laugh. Even 
Ebenezer felt the infection and pranced around 
them gayly, wheezing and puffing with commingled 
fatness and enjoyment of the joke. Then, in one 
final outburst of appreciation, he lowered his blunt 
muzzle to the ground and laid before the artist, not 
his ball, but the sucked and sodden remnants of a, 
cap. 

Buddie pounced for the cap. 

“Ebenezer!” And, this time, his voice betrayed 
his real contrition. Bones would grow again and 
bruises resume their normal tint and size; but caps 
of English tweed were another matter. 

“Never mind. I’ve another in my trunk, and this 
was getting faded, anyway,” Mr. Kent said quickly, 
for now he saw a cloud in the gray eyes before him, 
and clouds, he believed, should have no place on 
the horizon of a boy like Buddie Angell. “Be- 
sides,^’ he took the cap from Buddie’s hand ; “really, 
he hasn’t hurt it much; it is only rather sloppy. 
Anyway,” he stuck it in his pocket as he spoke; 
“I meant to go bareheaded up here, when I came. 
This will be a good chance to begin ; I can say the 
dog gave me an excuse. Like to play ball, you 
rascal Go get it, then.” 

But Ebenezer ’s interest in his ball had abated. He 
preferred the cap. Accordingly, he pranced about 
the artist in clumsy appeal. 

“No, sir; you can’t have it. Where is your ball ? 
No; your ball?” 


BUDDIE FINDS A CRONY 


53 


“Here’s another.” And Buddie produced it. 

“Oh. Plays two at once, like any other juggler? 
Good boy! Now — go!” And Buddie held his 
breath in wonder at the long, strong sweep made 
by the outflung ball. 

Ebenezer, the cap forgotten, went scrabbling after 
it. He found it without delay; nevertheless, it 
was long before he was back again. This time, 
Buddie was prancing as excitedly as Ebenezer. 

“You can’t do it again,” he proclaimed shrilly. 

The artist laughed. 

“Why not?” 

“Because — nobody could; not even — ” And 
Buddie uttered the name of the most famous pitcher 
of his day. “He’s a young man, too; but he could 
never do that, twice running.” 

“It might depend a little bit upon his training.” 
Mr. Kent bent down and took the ball from Eben- 
ezer’s jaws, whirled it up with a deft turn of his 
wrist, whirled it again; then, “Anyhow, let’s try,” 
he said nonchalantly. 

A minute later, there came a little upward curling 
of his gray mustache, as he heard Buddie’s roar of 
approbation. 

“Done, by Jingo; and a good twenty yards to 
spare ! Mr. Kent, you are a wonder.” 

The mustache curled a little higher, for the boyish 
praise was sweet. Mr. David Kent revered his art 
exceedingly; he revered yet more his supple, agile 
body whose every nerve and muscle he had trained 
to answer to the bidding of his brain. But few 
could be made into artists, he was accustomed to 
insist ; a perfectly adjusted body was a gift within 


54 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


the grasp of all men, and the more honour to those 
who were not too self-indulgent to ignore its possi- 
bilities. It was more worth while to make the most 
and the best of the common thing than of the un- 
common one. Accordingly, nine men out of every 
ten counted David Kent an eccentric. The tenth 
man, though, insisted that David Kent was doing 
something worth the while. If the body had such 
splendid possibilities, then why not make it an extra 
duty to develop them to the very utmost.^ There 
was no reason that agility and suppleness should be 
the possession of boys alone. As for David Kent 
himself, he rarely boasted of his hobbies ; he merely 
rode them. Therefore, — 

‘‘No; only a bit of an athlete,” he said. 

“A bit! Hh ! What team are you on?” 
Buddie demanded. 

“Team?” 

“Yes. Aren’t you professional?” 

Once more the artist stooped to take the ball from 
Ebenezer. 

“Oh, no.” 

Buddie’s face fell. 

“You aren’t? I thought — But you play base- 
ball?” 

“I used.” 

“ ’Varsity ? ” 

“Ye — es.” 

Buddie wondered at the hesitation. He did not 
like to ask its cause, although his companion would 
have chosen him to do so. The consequent confes- 
sion that he had lost a close-drawn tenth inning for 
his team by collapsing utterly at sight of the injured 


BUDDIE FINDS A CRONY 


55 


nose of one of his companions: this might have 
paved the way for a word of explanation of his 
apparent funk, the other night. It seemed so foolish 
to tell Buddie, apropos of nothing in particular, 
that from his childhood he had fainted always at 
the sight of blood. Unfortunately, though, Buddie 
had moments of remembering his good manners. He 
remembered them now, and forebore to ask a ques- 
tion. That long-drawn ye-ek might have its origin 
in some boyish prank above which the artist would 
have chosen to draw the veil of complete forgetful- 
ness. Instead of pressing the question, — 

“What else can you do Buddie demanded, with 
surpassing tact. 

“Else?” 

“Besides pitching the greatest balls that ever 
were ? ” Buddie urged excitedly. 

All of a sudden, the gray eyes lost their indiffer- 
ence, and twinkled with a mirth like Buddie’s own. 

“Sometimes I paint pictures.” 

“Oh, yes, that,” Buddie admitted, with some 
impatience. “But I mean the other sort of things. 
Can you use a bat ? ” 

“ A little. I don’t care too much about it, though.” 

“Why not ?” 

“Sluggy. It is more strength than skill, after all 
the fuss.” And now there was no conscious effort 
in the way the speaker dropped into boy vernacular. 
“I like tennis better, myself. Here’s something 
else I like. Look here.” An instant later, three 
coins were spinning from one hand to the other, 
rising and falling in a rhythmic dance. 

Buddie’s eyes widened, threatened to drop from 


56 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


his round, red head. Then he yielded to his over- 
powering curiosity. 

“Were you ever in a circus he inquired. 

“Not yet. I may be driven to it, some day. Do 
you think they’d have me As he put the question, 
Mr. Kent kept the coins spinning in the air with 
one hand, dived into his pocket with the other, took 
out three more coins and set them spinning in their 
turn. For a good two minutes, he kept up the 
dance. Then he let them fall together, clashing, 
into his outstretched right hand. “Want me to 
teach you how.^^” he asked. 

“Do I?” Buddie’s accent was sufficient answer. 

The artist’s voice lost a little of its nonchalance. 

“All right, then. But on one condition.” 

“What’s that?” 

“That you let me try to paint you.” 

Buddie’s face fell. 

“Make it Ebenezer,” he urged swiftly. 

Mr. Kent’s face fell, in its turn. Ebenezer was an 
excellent dog, and his hair would offer its own prob- 
lems as to treatment. Nevertheless, dogs were not 
exactly in his line. Then a way of escape opened 
out before him. 

“Together,” he said firmly. 

Buddie hesitated for one final instant. Then his 
pride in Ebenezer triumphed over the possibilities 
of boredom. 

“Done,” he said. 

And so the bargain was completed. It was long, 
however, before it came to any practical fulfilment. 


CHAPTER SIX 


EBENEZER AND THE TIMBER WOLF 

O UT in the long grass, a good two miles from 
town, Buddie and Tom lay prostrate, hidden. 
No eyes but the keenest could have discovered their 
retreat, and then only because they added to their 
keenness the surety that the boys were somewhere 
in the immediate neighbourhood. In the crook 
of Buddie’s arm, cuddled against him with a familiar- 
ity that betokened apprecative friendship, was a 
small and shining rifle. The twin rifle lay in front 
of Tom ; but it lay a long way in front of him, and 
it was not loaded. Whatever his superiority in 
point of school, heretofore Tom had not added 
target practise to his other accomplishments. 

Indian Bill squatted on his heels between the boys. 
It was two weeks, now, since Mr. MacDougall had 
confided the pair of youngsters to Indian Bill’s good 
care, two weeks that they had gone afield with him, 
sometimes pounding along on Budge and Toddie at 
the heels of Indian Bill’s half-broken broncho, 
sometimes on foot and armed with rod or rifle, as 
the chances of the day and their own inclinations 
dictated. At the first. Dr. Angell had looked a 
little dubious over the boys’ new monitor ; but Mr. 
MacDougall had convinced him that Indian Bill 
was steadiness itself, the safest and the most re- 


58 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 

sponsible guide to be found within a radius of 
eighty miles. 

Not content with outside testimony. Daddy had 
put Indian Bill through a searching catechism ; 
the answers to the catechism had put his own 
woodcraft to the test, but Daddy had come out of 
the test like a man. He and Indian Bill had parted 
in a mood of mutual respect and satisfaction. Indian 
Bill had promised to teach the boys to cast a fly, to 
manage a canoe and to kill any game that offered, 
from rattlers to bison. Furthermore, that done, 
he promised to return them home, each night, 
undamaged. And, after an afternoon spent in his 
society. Daddy believed him implicitly. It was 
plain that Indian Bill knew what he was saying. 

From that afternoon onward, a new life dawned 
for the two boys. That afternoon, in common 
boredom, they had gone their separate ways, the 
one to fish, the other to amuse himself as best he 
might with Ebenezer, until Ebenezer succeeded in 
focussing Mr. Kent’s attention on their presence. 
The next day, severally forgetful of fishing and of 
the juggling artist, forgetful, too, of certain spots 
on their anatomy which were very far from callous, 
they had mounted Budge and Toddie and, with their 
luncheons lashed behind their saddles, had gone 
loping away into the canon, with Indian Bill loping 
along between them. No sooner had the mouth of 
the cafion shut behind them, though, than Indian 
Bill’s lope changed to a swinging gallop and the 
boys, perforce, must gallop, too, or else be left be- 
hind and out of sight completely. 

The galloping was fun; but not its aftermath. 


EBENEZER AND THE TIMBER WOLF 59 


The boys groaned dolorously, once they dismounted 
from their saddles; but Indian Bill listened to their 
groans unpityingly. 

“Man always get stiff, when he is learning to ride,” 
he said. “No matter. He get better by and by.” 

“Hang by and by!” Buddie objected. “It’s 
now that’s the matter. I say. Bill, I’m about all 
in.” 

Indian Bill shrugged his shoulders. 

“You grumble-bug ? ” he queried. “Mr. MacDoo 
said you were not cowards.” 

The word made Buddie testy. 

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m only beastly sore and 
stiff. How about you. Chub?” 

“Worse,” Chubbie responded tersely. “Also 
bumped.” For Toddie, in sheer lightness of heart, 
had done his best to spill Tom off, that morning, 
and, in the end, he had succeeded. 

Indian Bill hobbled the ponies. Then he lit his 
pipe. 

“You must hold the saddle better,” he instructed 
them. “Then they can’t get you off. To-morrow 
by and by you’ll get over being stiff, after you’ve 
had some grub.” 

Grub, accordingly, they had. Afterwards, Indian 
Bill insisted that they should gallop home. The 
boys protested vainly; to their later surprise, they 
found that the second gallop undid a number of the 
knots in their anatomies. Moreover, though 
Toddie was so far animated by his success of the 
morning that he tried all manner of tricks to unseat 
his rider, Tom held on manfully and came home 
without a tumble. As consequence, Buddie found 


60 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


him disagreeably smug, all evening, after the curt 
word of praise with which Indian Bill had left him. 

Next day, the ponies were left in their stable, and 
Indian Bill took the boys forth on foot, for a scramble 
up the mountain to a little lake much loved by 
salmon trout. Here, it was Tom’s turn to score, 
for Buddie used his line as if it were a flail, lashing 
the waters until the hungry fish fled in consterna- 
tion and huddled greedily at Tom’s end of the little 
pool. 

Next day after, honours were easy, for Indian Bill 
took them out on the river in his bark canoe. Both 
the boys could row more than a little, both were 
masters of the science and the art of steering, so it 
was but a step to learn to use a paddle with deftness 
and discretion. An intervening day on horseback 
kept the honours easy ; but, once it came to marks- 
manship, Buddie was far in the lead. Not in vain 
had he been a pioneer among boy scouts, leading a 
company whose West Point scout master had focussed 
most of his attention upon drill and shooting. 
Buddie could hit his bull’s eye, eight times out of 
every ten; and Indian Bill promptly set to work 
to teach him to hit a falling penny. The teaching, 
though, bade fair to last indefinitely. Tom, while it 
lasted, lay on his back in the shade and offered 
drastic comment. The burden of his comment, 
to the effect that some fellows thought they could 
do anything, till they found out that — and so forth, 
exasperated Buddie into a state of unsteadiness 
where he would have missed a barn door at four 
paces. 

Judged merely as an Indian, Bill was a shocking 


EBENEZER AND THE TIMBER WOLF 61 


disappointment. Only his black hair, his jutting 
cheek bones and his apparently unending assortment 
of grunts betrayed his lineage. He dressed like a 
well-to-do tramp; he spoke a jargon culled from 
the broken English of the Italian gangs who laboured 
on the roadway, and adorned with the choicest 
flowers of college slang brought out by successive 
generations of assistant engineers. In short, he 
might have been anything from an ex-convict to an 
Oriental prince travelling incognito. 

As guide, philosopher and friend, however, he was 
unexcelled. He knew every bypath and trail of the 
region; he could answer any question of woodcraft 
that the mind of boy could concoct and ask. As a 
rule, too, he answered accurately. When accuracy 
failed him, he answered with a grave air of general 
omniscience that was quite as satisfactory as mere 
accurate information, and gave the boys a sense of 
excited interest as to whether it would be safe to 
pass the information on, or no. It was good fun to 
pass it on, and see Aunt Julia and the doctor exchange 
glances of pleased surprise at their intelligence. 
There were other experiences, though, that were 
less good fun. Now and then, at some proudly- 
uttered bit of wisdom, Mr. MacDougall had been 
known to go off into a roar of laughter. Pressed 
for the reason, he could only be induced to gasp, — 

“Oh, that Bill! That Bill!’’ 

And Buddie, like every other boy at the transition 
age, hated intensely to be laughed at. Therefore, 
after a few experiments, he determined to keep 
Indian Bill’s wise utterances for his own personal 
instruction. 


62 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 

Apart from the lore of woodcraft which Indian Bill, 
as the case might be, did, or did not, have, his scent 
for potential game was unfailing ; his skill in making 
up a varied programme, comfortably exciting, and 
not too strenuous, was unrivalled. He never allowed 
the boys to miss a chance for really good sport; 
neither did he allow them to do too much of any 
one thing, or to do it too often. He trained them in 
a dozen things at once, and kept keen their interest 
in all the dozen. 

This had been going on for two good weeks now, 
and the boys prudently had been making the most 
of all their chances. This sort of thing, they argued, 
was too much fun to last. They would take it as it 
came, until the annual arrival of the expert hunters 
who, Mr. MacDougall assured them, took Bill with 
them into the higher mountains during a part of 
each July and August. However, he had also told 
them, by that time they ought to know enough to 
take to the woods upon their own account, without 
the guiding brain and hand of Indian Bill to plan 
their expeditions for them. In August, too, his 
own work would slacken a little of its hold upon his 
time. Perhaps they all would try a bit of moun- 
taineering, later on. Meanwhile, they best would 
get all the experience out of Indian Bill they could. 

That very morning, Indian Bill had offered them 
a new experience. In spite of his stolid counte- 
nance, his eyes had glistened with delight, as he came 
galloping up to the MacDougall steps, directly after 
breakfast, drew up his broncho with a flourish, and, 
flinging his leg over the saddle, sat sidewise to face 
Buddie. 


EBENEZER AND THE TIMBER WOLF 63 


“You come shoot timber wolf, this morning?” 
he inquired. 

“Sure.” Buddie spoke as calmly as if he had ever 
shot anything larger than a jack-rabbit. 

“All right. You get your gun ready and find 
Tom. I’ll be back soon.” And, with a second 
flourish, he flung his leg back to position, and 
gathered up the reins. 

“ Wait a jiffy. How far is it. Bill ? Shall we walk, 
or ride?” Buddie cast the questions at Bill’s 
retreating back. 

“Can’t hunt timber wolf on horseback,” Indian 
Bill responded, over his retreating shoulder. “He’s 
foxy. We must lie doggo, and wait for him to show 
up-” 

* “Where ? How do you know there is one. Bill ?” 
Buddie shouted after him. 

Indian Bill apparently thought better of his deter- 
mination to be gone. Urging his pony to a gallop, 
he cut a wide circle in the offing and came tearing 
back again to bestow more information. 

“Bill knows,” he said, as he drew up so suddenly 
as to cause his pony to come dangerously near to 
seating himself upon his tail. “He has been round 
here, three-four nights. Last night and night 
before, he was in Stanway ’s corral.” 

“How do you know?” 

Indian Bill paused to light his pipe. 

“I watch him,” he said calmly. “I sat in hay- 
heap, and watched him kill a lamb.” 

“Bill, you beast ! Why didn’t you stop him ? ” Bud- 
die demanded, horror-stricken at the mental picture. 

Indian Bill spoke unconcernedly. 


64 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“Because I wanted you bimeby to help me stop 
him. I follow him, where the lamb drip-drip on 
the ground, and I find out where he hides. Now 
we’ll go kill him, so he won’t come back, to-night. 
So long, then. I’ll go put away my horse and pretty 
soon come back.” 

A half hour later, the two boys, guns on shoulder, 
were following Indian Bill into the canon’s mouth. 
Once inside the canon. Bill turned sharply towards 
the eastern slope, went up it for a little way, turned 
again to follow the general direction of the canon, 
and then came to a sudden halt. 

“In there,” he said briefly. “He’s sleepy now, 
after much lamb-meat. Bimeby, though, he’ll wake 
up thirsty and go get some water in the brook up 
there. He always trots along here ; we can hit him, 
when he’s going by.” 

“How do you know all this yarn. Bill.?” Buddie 
made incredulous query, for it was not altogether 
plain whether or not Indian Bill was testing their 
credulity. 

Indian Bill gave him a glance of frigid scorn. 

“Bill’s hunters coming, next week,” he muttered; 
“real men hunters, not just boys. They believe 
Bill, when he talks.” 

Promptly Buddie abased himself, likewise he 
abased the innocent Tom who had not spoken an 
incriminating syllable. Indian Bill waited patiently, 
until he saw that no more penitence could be ex- 
tracted from either of the boys. Then he expressed 
himself as being satisfied, and gave himself over to 
the task of showing the boys how to hide themselves 
in the tall grass above the trail. That done, — 


EBENEZER AND THE TIMBER WOLF 65 


“What’s doing now?” Buddie queried flippantly, 
for Indian Bill’s elaborate preparations seemed rather 
wasted upon one lonesome timber wolf. 

Indian Bill lifted one warning finger. 

“Hsssss !” he hissed. “Timber Wolf has big 
ears. We just wait here, till he comes out.” 

“How long?” Buddie demanded. 

Indian Bill lowered his voice impressively. 

“Who knows?” he said. “Maybe we wait one 
hour, maybe two, maybe all day. Nobody knows 
how long he sleeps, when he is very full. We just 
wait.” 

This time, it was Buddie who spoke impressively. 

“Well, I am blessed!” he said. 

Tom spoke too low for even Indian Bill to hear. 

“Maybe so’s the timber wolf,” he said. 

And Buddie chuckled. 

Then, warned by something in the eyes of Indian 
Bill that this was no time for flippant mirth, the 
boys came to attention, and the silence fell about 
them, a silence so intense that, bit by bit, it imposed 
its spell upon the boys until they dared not break 
it. And, bit by bit, by that same measure, the 
morning dragged itself along, until the boys imagined 
that they had lain there in the grass for many hours, 
not merely half of one. And then, of a sudden, 
something broke the silence, a heavy something, 
wheezing and rushing to and fro distractedly. 

An instant afterward, Tom showed the stuff 
he was made of, showed that he had within him 
fighting blood, albeit rather thinned by peaceful 
generations. Swiftly he flung his gun to his shoulder 
and took careful aim at the far horizon, totally 


66 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


heedless of the fact that the gun was not loaded and 
that he was holding it carefully upside down. But 
Buddie, though cheered by this unlooked-for mani- 
festation of the hunting spirit, yet knocked the gun 
aside with his unoccupied hand. 

“Hold on, you idiot!” he bade his friend impo- 
litely. “That’s no timber wolf, thrashing about like 
that. Besides, it’s coming from the wrong direction. 
You’ll kill somebody yet, if you don’t look out. 
It’s — By Jove, put down your gun ! It’s Eben- 
ezer.” 

And Ebenezer it surely was, breathless and trium- 
phant, his shaggy coat plastered to his sides with 
specimens gathered from the burry patches he had 
traversed, and his bearded face wreathed in smiles 
that he had succeeded in tracking his adored master 
through two miles of mountain fastness. 

Indian Bill grunted violently, as he sat up and 
scowled upon the rapturous Ebenezer who was 
dancing madly up and down their grassy hiding 
place. 

Buddie, scenting damage to his pet, spoke hur- 
riedly. 

“It’s all right. Bill. He’ll be quiet in a sec. or 
two. Just let him work off a little steam, and then 
he’ll stay — What do you call it ? Doggo ? — just 
as well as any of us.” 

“Puppy-o, you’d better say.” And Tom made a 
snatch at Ebenezer’s hairy flank, lost his balance and 
fell across Buddie’s prostrate body. Naturally 
enough, Buddie yelped with mingled surprise and 
anguish, for Tom, though long and lean, was also 
solid, and he had given no hint of his intention to 


EBENEZER AND THE TIMBER WOLF 67 


arrive on Buddie’s stomach. There followed the 
inevitable rough-and-tumble fray, a fray to which 
Ebenezer, according to his custom, lent himself with 
great enthusiasm ; and, for a minute or two, the air 
was full of puffing sighs and sounding whacks and 
little canine gurgles and yelps of pleasure. Indian 
Bill shut his teeth and fixed his gaze upon the spot 
where his expected victim was supposed to be 
sleeping the sleep of sated gluttony. 

“No good to try to hunt with little boys,” he 
muttered. “They always make big noise and 
scare Mr. Timber Wolf away. Boys got no sense, 
anyhow.” 

Buddie laughed. 

“No matter. Bill, so long as their Uncle Brooks 
has got the needful dollars to pay your wages,” he 
retorted. “You can have your fun in any way you 
like. For my part, though. I’ll take mine in Eb- 
enezer.” 

Indian Bill shook his head disdainfully. 

“That dog not good. He can’t hunt, nor bite, 
nor kill; he can’t do anything but eat. He’d be 
afraid and run away, if Mr. Timber Wolf should 
show himself.” 

“Let him try it and see.” Buddie spoke deri- 
sively, and more for the sake of teasing Indian Bill 
than because he had any faith in the prowess of his 
pet. 

He spoke carelessly ; but his phrase was cut short 
by one of those coincidences which now and then arise 
to take one’s breath away. 

The timber wolf did try it. What was more, he 


saw. 


68 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


Disturbed in his sleep, perhaps by the very 
clamour of which Indian Bill had been complaining, 
he stirred, then rose, and moving out of the rocky 
cleft where he had been lying hid, he stuck his 
head out into the open and stood, staring drowsily 
about him. What happened next inside of Eb- 
enezer’s wise gray head, it would be hard to say. 
Probably some hereditary recollection that his was 
the race born to safeguard the flocks, some hered- 
itary realization that wolves were always foes of 
sheep ; some ancestral nerve, it was evident, was set 
to throbbing, telegraphing its messages into 
Ebenezer’s brain. The instant of the telling is 
many times longer than the instant of the fact 
itself. Before even Indian Bill, or much less Buddie, 
could bring his gun into position, Ebenezer, the fat 
and slothful, Ebenezer, the useless, had given 
utterance to a deep-throated snarl such as his own 
ears had never heard from him before, and, with 
one crazy leap and plunge, had hurled himself across 
the intervening stretch of grassland, to throw him- 
self upon the astonished timber wolf with a sudden- 
ness and force that left him powerless to resist. 
There was a moment of chaos, a moment of stillness. 
Then Ebenezer licked his lips, shook himself till 
every hair danced beneath its burry mesh work; 
then he turned sedately and trotted back to Buddie’s 
side. 

Once more, generations of decent living had left 
their mark and told their tale. Ebenezer had showed 
himself a gentleman, even in the way that he did 
his hereditary ugly work. 

That night, however, an irate and disgusted 


EBENEZER AND THE TIMBER WOLF 69 


Indian Bill sat long in council with Mr. Brooks 
MacDougall. There was the clink of silver, when 
they parted. Next morning, Mr. Brooks Mac- 
Dougall announced to all whom it might concern 
that Indian Bill had been obliged to start suddenly 
on a hunting trip that would take him to the farther 
side of the range. 


CHAPTER SEVEN 


LONESOME TERESA 

“ A FTER all,” Aunt Julia said to her half-brother, 
when they were left alone to finish their break- 
fast at their leisure; “I believe I am more than half 
glad of it.” 

“Really.^ Yes, a third of a cup, please. Well, 
I am wholly so.” 

Aunt Julia looked pleased. 

“You, too?” 

“Yes.” The doctor spoke with deliberation. 
“I want my son to be an all-round man. That 
does not mean, though, that I care especially to 
have him turn out a butcher.” 

“No ; it wouldn’t sound well in the family annals,” 
Aunt Julia assented gravely. Then she began to 
laugh. “From all accounts, though, I don’t believe 
that there’s much chance of any great amount of 
butchery at present.” 

“Only in intention?” the doctor queried whim- 
sically. “Well, after all, that’s what counts. I 
want Buddie to be a good marksman; nobody 
knows when it may be a help to him. Still, it was 
refreshing to hear him telling Tom, after they were 
in bed, last night, that he didn’t believe he ever 
could kill anything that faced him and looked him 
in the eyes.” 


LONESOME TERESA 


71 


Aunt Julia nodded thoughtfully. 

“I like that. Best not tell Brooks, though; 
he would be horrified. He has lived out here in the 
wilderness so long that he has become a thorough 
sportsman. But what is all right for forty isn’t 
exactly what we want for fourteen. Aside from 
the killing things, Ernest, had it ever struck you 
that — She hesitated, blushing a little as the idea 
occurred to her that she was no longer in the least 
responsible for the youngster who, for nine long 
months, had been her mingled joy and care. 

The doctor took the phrase from her lips. 

“That the boys were likely to turn into young 
savages? Yes, Julia, it had.” 

“And you didn’t like it any better than I did?” 
As she put the question. Aunt Julia rested her elbows 
on the table and cupped her hands beneath her 
chin. 

Unthinkingly the doctor copied her gesture and 
pose. 

“ No,” he said then ; “I did not. Still, I suppose 
it is only natural, considering the temptations, 
although I didn’t foresee it, when I came.” 

“When you came?” his sister asked him quickly. 
“I hope you don’t regret your coming, Ernest.” 

The doctor’s accent reassured her instantly. 

“Not a bit, dear girl. It was a tremendous 
chance for both of us. This out-door life is every^ 
thing for me, this summer; and, as for Buddie, he 
must learn as soon as possible that, because on no 
account is he to be a milksop, neither on any account 
is he to be a young desperado. In time, that Buf- 
falo Bill of Brooks’s will be the best thing in the world 


72 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 

for both the boys. The only trouble was that he 
appeared upon the scene too soon, before they quite 
had found their balance in these new conditions. 
Instead of running wild, they bolted. After a little, 
they’ll calm down. I wish — ” 

“Well?” Aunt Julia urged, for the doctor had 
caught himself up suddenly. 

He laughed. 

“I wish you had a daughter, Julia.” 

She lifted her brows mockingly. 

“Just like Teresa?” she inquired. 

“You mind-reader! How did you know?” 

“I have felt it coming. In fact, I knew it was 
only a question which one of us spoke of it first. 
Ernest, how are we going to get her out here?” 

The doctor whistled thoughtfully; but the new 
light in his eyes showed the content he felt at the 
suggestion. 

“Would they let her come?” 

“I think it could be arranged.” Aunt Julia spoke 
decidedly. She was a woman resourceful in her 
methods of persuasion. Besides, she had lived for 
many years next house to Teresa and the other 
members of her clan. 

“You mean that you would arrange it? But 
have we any right to take the child away, if her 
mother needs her ?” Dr. Angell asked conscientiously. 

But Aunt Julia merely repeated her former 
utterance, — 

“I think it could be arranged.” 

Then she fell silent and began beating a light 
tattoo upon the table-cloth. Her brother watched 
her in respectful silence. The experience of the 


LONESOME TERESA 


73 


past fifteen months, experience gained in part from 
personal observation, in part by way of the reports 
of Buddie, had taught him that his sister, left to 
herself, could find a way to the fulfilment of any 
plan she deemed expedient. In the difficult trails 
where he was wont to flounder, she walked steadily, 
securely, to her end. Therefore he saw no reason 
to disturb her, midway along her course. 

“You can’t,” deliberately Aunt Julia spoke from 
out her meditations; “you can’t very well wrap up 
a great girl like that in paper, and send her out 
here by Adams express.” 

“No,” the doctor made grave assent; “no, you 
really can’t.” 

After an interval. Aunt Julia pushed back her 
chair. 

“I’ll have to plan it out,” she said, with calm 
decision. “Leave it to me. I’ll think about it.” 

“And, if I can be of use — ” her brother hinted 
respectfully. 

“Perhaps. I’m not sure. I’ll talk it over with 
Brooks,” Aunt Julia answered. “Of course, though, 
you won’t say a word yet to Buddie.” 

“Of course not.” Dr. Angell rose. Then he 
turned to his sister again. “But, Julia, ought you 
to undertake any more care?” he asked affec- 
tionately. 

Her eyes answered his accent, though her lips 
showed her amusement. 

“You don’t know Teresa yet, Ernest, if you can 
speak of her as a possible care. The child will be 
taking care of us, before she has been in camp an 
hour.” 


74 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“In a way, yes. And yet — ” 

Aunt Julia interrupted with decision. 

“In every way. You’ll find she’ll mend your 
socks, and mend my broken dishes, while she also is 
mending the manners of the boys. Teresa is as 
self-reliant as she is capable. Once we get her 
here, it is only a question of giving her a bed, and 
of seeing to it that she doesn’t lure the boys on into 
breaking their own necks and hers.” 

The doctor looked a trifle startled. Such possi- 
bilities had not entered into any of his plans. His 
intermittent experiences of Teresa had been brief 
enough to conceal the fact that she had been poised 
insecurely upon the pinnacle of her company manners. 

“But I didn’t suppose she was that sort,” he said. 

His sister laughed at the consternation evident in 
his tone. 

“She is, though; and therein lies her value in this 
especial case,” she answered, with a shrewdness born 
of her months of studying Buddie’s eccentricities 
and his needs. “ If she were the other sort, mincing 
and finical, the boys would go their ways without 
her, and then good bye to her having the slightest 
influence upon them. Because she will insist on 
going with them until she is ready to drop, and 
because she is good, lively company, they will calm 
down and fit their pace to hers, rather than leave 
her behind. I know what I am talking about, 
Ernest. I haven’t watched Buddie, all these weeks 
and months, for nothing. He has had spasms of 
being polite to other girls; but, in the end, they 
bored him, because they all insisted on being too 
girl-y. With Teresa, it was different. Half the 


LONESOME TERESA 75 

time they were together, I think Buddie didn’t 
know whether she was boy or girl.” 

‘‘Did you?” the doctor questioned keenly. 

Aunt Julia understood his keeness, and she liked 
its cause. 

“I did,” she said, with crisp decision. “For all 
she isn’t girl-y, she is a girl, and feminine down to 
the bottom of her soul. She may be a little boister- 
ous, she might even be quite spunky on occasion; 
but she could never be rude or masculine, if she tried. 
It simply isn’t in her.” 

Meanwhile, the subject of the discussion sat on 
her own front step, penning a letter to her former 
friend and crony, Buddie Angell. It was literally 
her own front step where she sat, the front door 
step of the playhouse built by an indulgent father 
for his solitary daughter at an epoch when he first had 
seen that that daughter’s existence was likely to be 
cramped and crumpled by contact with too many 
younger brothers. There were nine of these brothers, 
ranging all the way from the solemn and sanctimonious 
Eric, just younger than Teresa, down to the fractious 
infant playing on the lawn, an infant baptized Toby, 
but commonly known as little Tootles. Nine 
brothers undoubtedly may be nine times a blessing ; 
but no one sister can be expected to keep them 
properly in subjection. Teresa’s father had foreseen, 
even when the nine were only four or five, that there 
would be periods when Teresa was in danger of being 
swamped completely; and it was to provide a safe 
harbour for such periods that the playhouse had been 
built. 

One such period had just been taking place. There 


76 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


had been disagreement, contest, threatened chastise- 
ment. Then Teresa, putting a strong curb on her 
girlish temper, had shut her teeth, elevated her chin 
and marched away in search of solitude and spiritual 
shelter, leaving the nine to fight it out alone, as best 
they could. Judging from the sounds which floated 
over to her, as she sat writing in the doorway, there 
had been no lack in their ability to carry on the strife. 
Indeed, its aftermath had come trailing after her in 
the person of a teary, mottled little Tootles. That 
was the worst of it all, Teresa reflected to herself 
disgustedly, the while she mopped the tears from the 
fat and mottled cheeks of Tootles : excepting the 
time that they were fighting her, never by any chance 
did the nine unite against a common foe. As result, 
there was always a worsted and wailing minority 
trailing after her in search of consolation. Not 
that Teresa failed to love her little brothers. It 
was merely that, just now and then, she found 
herself wishing vaguely that there were not quite 
so many of them, or else that six or seven of them 
had had a bit maturer grip on their emotions. 

Tootles consoled and dismissed to his own amuse- 
ment, Teresa returned to her interrupted letter 
which, to tell the truth, had progressed only so far 
as the single line which gave the date. Teresa 
detested writing letters; but she had promised 
Buddie she would write to him, every month, and 
she had kept her promise bravely, in spite of pens 
that blotted and words whose spelling passed her 
ken. Indeed, that was one reason Teresa disliked 
writing; the words she really cared to use, the 
words which told her meaning with the greatest 


LONESOME TERESA 77 

force and clearness, were just the words she could 
not spell, sometimes because they were too long 
and intricate, sometimes because they never had 
been set down in any dictionary. That last fact, 
though, made no difference to Teresa. As long as 
the words expressed the things she wished to say, 
that was all that counted. Dictionary or not, 
Buddie would find out their meaning from the rest 
of the sentence and his common sense. Long 
since, she had learned to count on Buddie’s under- 
standing, without the need for any explanations on 
her own part. 

It was now a little more than a year ago that 
Buddie Angell had come over her back fence, one 
morning, and, at the same time, come into the very 
middle of her life. They had been friends from the 
start, albeit they had begun squabbling from the 
instant that their eyes first had rested on each 
other’s faces. That was the joy of Buddie. One 
could squabble with him grandly, without its break- 
ing up their friendship in the least. Rather, they 
had been all the better friends by reason of their 
little tiffs. The warmest air gets sultry, and needs 
an occasional thunder storm to cool it. And it 
would be idle to deny that the intercourse of Buddie 
and Teresa had been full of storms. 

It was more than a year since Buddie, with 
Ebenezer at his heels, had come prancing across the 
threshold of Teresa’s universe. It was now five 
months since Buddie had vanished from her visible 
horizon. The time, though, had not blunted 
Teresa’s memories in the least, had not lessened her 
surety that, despite his sins, despite her proper 


78 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


loyalty to her own retinue of brothers, there never 
would be another boy to equal Buddie. 

At least, though, they had made the most of the 
months they had been together, had made the most 
of all their chances for good times. Teresa lived in 
a little house, next door to the large one which had 
been inhabited by Miss Julia Tenney before she had 
become Mrs. Brooks MacDougall. As long as she 
had been able to remember backward, Teresa had 
known and adored Miss Julia. Nevertheless, she 
had not known that Miss Julia owned a nephew, 
until the morning when that nephew had appeared. 
And such a nephew ! 

Miss Julia always was daintiness personified ; 
and, at that epoch of her life, the epoch before she had 
had the chastening experience of Buddie’s training, she 
was a little prim, more than a little given over to con- 
ventions. And this red-headed, freckled youngster 
with the frowsy dog trailing at his heels, this un- 
expected, unheralded nephew Buddie, was neither 
daintiness personified, nor yet was he conventional 
in the least. He was just plain, unregenerate 
human boy. Neither, to the end of things, had it 
been ever quite apparent on which side was the real 
training, whether Buddie or Miss Julia was its actual 
object. It was possible, however, that it had worked 
both ways. 

Anyway, one morning early, Teresa had gone, 
according to her custom, to sit in the old lilac bush 
in the fence corner, and plan out her programme for 
the day. She had been singing contentedly to her- 
self and, quite incidentally, to the entire neighbour- 
hood, when a boyish voice, close at hand, had offered 


LONESOME TERESA 


79 


disrespectful comment on her choice of song. She 
had retorted, and the rest had followed naturally, 
down to the moment when she had bidden Buddie 
and his woolly comrade to inspect the playhouse; 
down to the hour, nine months later, when she had 
waved a plucky farewell to a departing Pullman 
car, and then had gone back to hide herself in an 
abandoned playhouse and cry herself ill over the 
consciousness that that same Pullman car was 
carrying away with it a good half of her universe. 

During the intervening months, she and Buddie 
had been practically inseparable. Not a day had 
passed without their meeting ; all their best pranks 
had been concocted together and had been carried 
out in common ; all their worst half hours had been 
shared jointly, as had been all their chief est pleas- 
ures. Even they so far had contrived things as to 
have the need for discipline strike them both simul- 
taneously, thus shortening the later fugue of agony 
into one grand, smashing chord of woe. 

And now Buddie was in a remote corner of the 
earth called Gray Buttes, having the grandest 
possible times with a new boy called Chubbie Neal, 
and with an interesting background of Aunt Julia 
and wild Indian, and Ebenezer, and some mustang 
ponies, while she sat on the lonely doorstep, trying 
to write a letter, but really listening to the snifflings 
of a self-pitying little Tootles who, contrary to the 
creed of Buddie, believed in prolonging his woe in 
every possible variant of every different key. 
Gloomily Teresa bit the handle of her pen ; gloomily 
Teresa eyed the sheet of paper, still guiltless of any 
ink save on the single line given to the date. She 


80 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


had meant to write a long, a really interesting 
and long, letter to her absent friend, that day. 
What was the use, though, when her message could 
be condensed into half a dozen words ? But letters 
were intended to carry news, not give one’s personal 
opinion, or express one’s personal desires. Valiantly 
she gripped her pen, shutting her ears to the faint 
whimperings of the injured little Tootles. 

“Dear Buddie, — 

“School closes, next week, and we all are to 
have declamations. I am going to say Aunt Tabitha, 
and Eric is to say The Recessional. Sandy’s is 
shorter, but it is very earnest. It begins Flower in 
the crannied wall. He says he chose it for its thought- 
fulness; but I believe it was because it’s only ten 
lines, or else eight. I can say it ; but I can’t think 
just how it splits up. 

“Next week comes vacation. I mean to — ” 

Lifting her face from above the paper, Teresa sat 
staring off across the lawn. Her eyes, at first fixed 
on little Tootles, at length grew wide and vague, 
and then so misty that little Tootles vanished in a 
fog. The next minute, two great tears went splashing 
down upon the paper, reducing the later phrases 
to an inky pool. 

It was the final straw to Teresa’s agony, this 
ruining her hard-written letter with such ignoble 
stains. For a minute or two, she sat gazing down at 
it forlornly. Then, with a sudden decisive gesture, 
she cast the spotted sheet aside, and gripped her pen 
with nervous fingers. 


LONESOME TERESA 


81 


“You dear old boy,’’ she wrote; “what’s the use 
of my trying to sit here and write to you about all 
sorts of things that don’t count, when all I want is 
just to see you, and have a good talk about the things 
we both are doing? I miss you, every single day. 
Of course, there are Eric and Sandy and the rest ; 
but they aren’t you, and they do make me very mad 
sometimes. Don’t you suppose you’ll ever come 
back here to live? It was circus, last week, and I 
could have gone ; but I wouldn’t, without you. 

“ Yours loyally, 

“ Teresa. 

“ P.S. I buried Rosa, last week. I didn’t mean to ; 
but she kept leaking out her stuffing, and I thought 
I’d like to remember her before she was nothing but 
an empty calico bag. It was hard ; but so is life. 

“Yours, T.” 

Four days later, Buddie’s face was full of trouble, 
as he took his aunt apart from all the others and 
confided to her the contents of this harrowing epistle. 
Aunt Julia, as was her wont, accepted the confi- 
dence with all discretion, and administered just the 
proper amount of understanding and sympathy. 

To Buddie, she said comparatively little; but, in 
her heart of hearts, reading the girlish nature from 
between the lines, she made up her mind that the 
time for her to act was come. If Adams Express 
and the paper parcel were impossible, then some 
practicable substitute for these must be found. 


CHAPTER EIGHT 


ON THE TRAPEZE 

“ T WOULDN’T do that sort of thing, if I were 

-I- in your place, Kent,” Dr.^Angell was saying 
persuasively. 

“But why ?” 

The doctor laughed. 

“You’re not as young as you used to be,” he 
answered. 

The artist’s eyes twinkled. 

“Physician, heal — ” he suggested. 

“Precisely. That is what I have been doing. 
It took nine months in my case. We older fellows 
can’t afford to try tricks with Dame Nature, Kent; 
wherefore I advise against your doing too strenuous 
gymnastics in this altitude. At fifty more or less, 
one’s pumping apparatus begins to lose a little 
force, gets a bit loose around the packings.” 

“Not necessarily; not if one is in perfect trim, as 
I am.” 

“In training, yes.” And the doctor gave a 
glance of admiration at the long, supple body of 
his new friend. “However, training and trim are 
altogether different words.” 

“Think so?” the artist queried. “Look here, 
doctor ; I doubt your young son’s ability to do this.” 
And, without an instant’s preparation, he flung a hand- 


ON THE TRAPEZE 


83 


spring, then another sidewise, and landed, right side 
up, to all seeming none the worse for the experience. 

During the past two or three weeks. Dr. Angell 
had come to have a solid liking for the long, lean 
artist, had come to consider him a grand possibility 
by way of friend. His past observations, though, 
had not in the least prepared him for any such per- 
formances as these, and he confessed himself a little 
startled. Moreover, the doctor, despite his theories 
of democracy, was conventional; and it was not 
altogether according to his notions to have a man 
of fifty interrupt a serious conversation by cavort- 
ing in that fashion. 

Buddie, however, had no such reservations. Un- 
like his father, his admiration for a well-developed, 
supple body was a matter, not of theory, but of fact. 
From afar, he saw the delectable manoeuvre, and 
came running, shouting his admiration, as he ran. 

“Bully for you, Mr. Kent! What a whopper! 
Can you do it backwards?” 

“For heaven’s sake, Kent, don’t!” the doctor 
interposed a little hurriedly. 

His warning came too late. The artist waved his 
hand in answer to Buddie’s salutation, then sent his 
two heels flying through the air, landed right side 
up again, and came to demure attention just in sea- 
son to receive Buddie’s vociferous congratulations. 

“But I know you must have been in a circus,” 
Buddie clamoured wildly. “Was it Barnum and 
Bailey, or just Ringling; and when was it?” 

“Not yet, Buddie. I need to add a few more 
tricks to my list. They won’t have me on the 
strength of my handsprings.” 


84 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“They say cartwheels are dead easy,” Buddie 
said encouragingly. 

“Did you ever try them.^” 

“N — no; not exactly. But all you have to do 
about it is to twist yourself into a ring, and roll,” 
Buddie explained lucidly. “I watched one, last time 
I was at the circus. No; last time but one.” 

“Not the last time .^” Mr. Kent put the question 
promptly, for he felt there was a history behind the 
swift correction. 

The history came promptly, and not too fully 
edited. 

“No; last time, we didn’t get inside. It was 
Sandy Hamilton that proposed it. He is brother 
of Teresa, the one I was telling you about, only not 
half so good a sport as she is. We were to go at 
three in the morning, walk four miles to see it come 
in and unpack, because he couldn’t raise the money 
to go as one generally does. But he overslept, 
and Teresa came, too. It was all a mix-up ; but it 
was a good thing she came, because she brought 
some pie and things in a basket, to eat on the way.” 

“ And you saw it come in ? ” David Kent’s voice 
told Buddie that he had not forgotten certain day- 
break hours of his own boyhood. 

Buddie roused himself from sentimental memories 
of Teresa and the pie. 

’ Rather ! Ask Aunt Julia. Maybe she’d laugh 
about it now. In the time of it, though — ” Buddie’s 
pause was expressive. Then he chuckled, as he met 
his father’s eye and read therein that this whole 
tale was news to Dr. Angell. “She can give you 
points, when it comes to lectures, Daddy,” he said. 


85 


ON THE TRAPEZE 

“ She knows just how and where to slam it on. You 
see, the train was late, and we got interested in the 
elephants, and it seemed a shame not to watch how 
they acted in the streets. You know you don’t get 
elephants just walking around town, every day, 
except in a procession ; at least, not except in India, 
and so we went, too. Really, it was great, you 
know; and all the side-show people were walking 
around like anybody else, the kind you generally 
have to pay for. Honestly, for all the three of us, 
we must have saved as much as — ” Buddie lost 
himself in computation. 

“Well?” his father urged him. 

Buddie looked up, once more alert and eager. 

“Oh, we just got a little late about going home. 
We were there, in time for lunch; but we had 
missed out on breakfast and school, and nobody knew 
exactly where we were.” He shut one eye, and 
thrust his fists into his pockets. “ Gee-whizzikins i 
I didn’t suppose Aunt Julia had it in her to kick 
up such a tremendous row,” he observed reminis- 
cently. 

Mr. Kent’s mind was trained to see possible 
pictures in every phrase. Now, the mental photo- 
graph of dainty, discreet Mrs. Brooks MacDougall 
kicking up anything at all, even a row, appealed to 
him greatly. He longed for more details to fill in 
the barren outlines of the sketch. 

“What sort of a row, Buddie?” he inquired. 

But Buddie promptly rebuked him for his indis- 
cretion, albeit the edge of the rebuke was somewhat 
blunted by the angle of the accompanying glance. 

“I never tell tales on Aunt Julia,” he replied 


86 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


circumspectly. And then he harked back to his 
original subject. “Can you do cartwheels?” he 
demanded. 

Mr. Kent shook his head. For the time being, 
it seemed to him that no rejection of any of his 
pictures by any hanging committee could be one 
half so painful to his feelings as that frank avowal 
of the hiatus in his acrobatic prowess. 

Buddie turned philosophical, by way of hiding his 
real disappointment. 

“Well, I suppose a fellow can’t do everything,” 
he remarked, with a slight tinge of condescension. 
“ It’s something to do a good handspring, anyhow.” 

“Yes, perhaps.” The artist spoke with deep 
humility. Something in Buddie’s accent made him 
forgetful of the many bumps and bruises that had 
gone into the making of this one accomplishment. 

“Can you do anything else, Mr. Kent ?” Buddie 
asked politely. 

“Buddie!” his father’s tone was chiding. “Mr. 
Kent is an artist, not a circus clown.” 

“Who is talking about clowns. Daddy? They 
are only bores, put in to fill up the time. It’s the 
real fellows that we go to see, the acrobats and the 
jugglers and the trapeze men.” 

“You like trapeze work?” Mr. Kent interrupted 
him. 

“Naturally. Who doesn’t? We fellows had one 
in the barn, really a good one, with three swings to 
it and a lot of rings. I was wild to try it; but 
Sandy, the same one who started our circus plan, 
insisted he should be the first to go, because his name 
came ahead of mine in the alphabet.” 


ON THE TRAPEZE 


87 


“I don’t quite — ” 

Buddie paused to catch breath. While he paused, 
he flashed on the artist a cold glance of scorn, for 
the limits of his understanding. 

“Well, you don’t see the queerest things,” he 
remarked, with a crushing frankness. 

Again Daddy felt it was time to sound his warning 
note of, — 

“Buddie !” 

“Yes, I know; but he really doesn’t. Anybody 
ought to know that Alexander comes before Ernest, 
when you spell it, and — ” 

And then Mr. Kent fell into disgrace. 

“Ernest Angell?” he queried. “I must say, you 
don’t look it.” 

Buddie longed to resort to fisticuffs. He caught 
his father’s eye, however, and desisted. 

“Mr. Kent,” he grumbled; “my hair is very red, 
you know; and it does queer things to my temper, 
when people get too funny about my name. It’s a 
name that seems to run in the family, and the 
longer they keep it up, too, the more of a mismatch 
it is. They say I am even worse than Daddy used 
to be.” 

Daddy sought to create a diversion. 

“Where is Tom, this morning.?” he inquired. 

Buddie refused to be diverted. 

“Don’t worry. Daddy. I’m not telling about the 
way you skewered great-grandfather’s wig in church 
time. But, about the trapeze: Sandy was bound 
to go ahead, and he did go — on his head. It 
knocked him perfectly silly for about half an hour; 
and that frightened Aunt Julia so she made us take 


88 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 

it down. Shame, for it had been any amount of 
work to put it up ! Still, women are nervous, I 
suppose.” Buddie spoke tolerantly. Then he added, 
“Were you ever on a trapeze, Mr. Kent?” 

“I always keep one in my gymnasium.” 

Buddie’s eyes widened till they showed their 
surrounding whites. 

“Do you keep a gymnasium, a real one of your 
very own?” 

“Yes. I’ve always had one, ever since I was a 
boy.” 

“Your mother wasn’t nervous.” Buddie’s accent 
betrayed his envy. “How large a boy?” 

“Seven or eight.” 

“ Really ? And you have one now ? ” 

“Next my studio. I use the whole top of the 
building. It is finished up into the roof ; really, 
the rooms are high enough for almost anything.” 

“And you use it now, an ol — ” Buddie caught 
himself up swiftly, swiftly made his substitution; 
“a grown-up man like you?” 

“Every day, when I’m in town. Up here, I find 
I miss it,” Mr. Kent told him, simply as another 
boy. 

“Really, Kent,” the doctor interposed; “this is 
beginning to be interesting. You really mean — ” 

“I really mean that I am a bit of an amateur 
gymnast,” the artist answered. “It is unusual, I 
know ; but, after all, there is every reason for it. I 
have always loved it. It seems to be in my blood ; 
I fancy I must have had a circus rider among some 
of my many ancestors, and, in my crib, my mother 
says, I tumbled and twisted like a little eel. Since 


ON THE TRAPEZE 89 

I grew up and went about my art, I have cared for 
it more than ever.” 

The doctor nodded. 

‘T can see. You creative chaps always need a lot 
of exercise,” he said. 

“Not that at all. It’s quite the other way. My 
art has taught me to see the beauty in a lot of 
dangling muscles, and in the mere rhythm of motion. 
Besides, there are such a lot of ugly, clumsy bodies 
about, that it is only right for those of us who can see 
the difference to keep as light and as lithe as we can. 
Fact, Buddie? You might put it a little more 
shortly; but doesn’t the idea hold a little bit of 
common sense, after all ? ” 

Carried away by his own enthusiasm, the artist 
turned to Buddie for complete understanding. 
However, Buddie failed him utterly. 

“Ja,” he answered, with polite indifference, for, 
at fourteen, one takes the athletics and leaves out 
the art. 

Mr. Kent flushed to a rich, dark red. Never too 
self-trustful, he suddenly realized that, in all proba- 
bility, he had been maldng himself and his theories 
a confounded bore. He had the common sense to 
retrieve his error promptly. 

“I suppose there wouldn’t be a place up here,” 
he said thoughtfully. 

Buddie’s indifference vanished. 

“For a trapeze ?” 

“Yes, for a little one. I might be able to show 
you the easy way to do some things, and your father 
would be on hand to pick up the broken pieces. 
What of it, doctor ? ” 


90 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“Agreed. That is, if you’ll let me stop you, when 
I know you are overdoing it.” 

“Of course. Buddie must start slowly; else, 
he’ll come a cropper.” 

“I mean both of you. What is more, unless you 
both obey me. I’ll have your tackle cut down before 
your very eyes.” 

“What about Chub ?” Buddie queried. 

Both men suppressed their mental reservations. 
Concerning Chubbie’s trapeze prowess, they had 
their vigorous doubts. 

“If he cares about it,” Mr. Kent assured him. 

“Of course he will. But come along. Let’s go 
hunting for the best place.” And Buddie’s whistle 
to Ebenezer betrayed his impatience. 

In the end, though, the place had to be made for 
them. Gray Buttes architecture did not run to the 
sort of thing that can be converted into a gymnasium 
at a moment’s notice. Something especial had to 
be provided for the purpose. Mr. MacDougall saw 
to that. Indeed, as the time went on, the two boys, 
and then the two men, even, came to look upon Mr. 
Brooks MacDougall less as an indulgent relative 
than as a latter-day Aladdin whose lamp was always 
bright with many polishings. This time, his power 
showed itself in the prompt erection of a tall, wide 
tent close by the shack where Mr. Kent had set out 
his boot-trees and set up his easels, a tent so large 
as to give a circus-like flavour to the entire com- 
munity. 

The tent set up and its floor heaped thick with 
straw, Mr. MacDougall’s best bridge workman spent 
two long twilights in putting up the needful ropes 


ON THE TRAPEZE 


91 


and pulleys. Used to walking on a single beam 
above any sort of a roaring chasm, the mere clamber- 
ing about the upper stretches of a tent was to him 
the merest child’s play; and Mr. Kent, lying at 
full length in the straw, since that position afforded 
him the best possible view of operations, issued 
his orders about the proper placing of the rings 
and swings. Buddie sprawled beside him, his 
red head nuzzled against the artist’s elbow, for 
this present undertaking was going far to make 
him forget his earlier scorn of his companion’s 
manliness. 

Tom, meanwhile, a string of fish upon his shoulder, 
had betaken himself to Aunt Julia in search of the 
admiration which Buddie had withheld. Not that 
Buddie was a stranger to the charms of fishing; 
not that his boyish appetite ever quarrelled with 
the resultant meals. It was only that, for the 
moment, dangling fishlines had given place in his 
mind to dangling swings and rings and cross- 
bars, and he was too busy to halve his attention 
and apply the halves impartially to either in- 
terest. 

Tom, therefore, left the pair of enthusiastic acro- 
bats lying prone amid the straw, and went to look 
for his Aunt-by-Marriage Julia, as he sometimes 
dubbed her. He found her, sitting alone on the 
verandah, playing patience in the twilight, and 
doing her best to forget the fluffy Persian pussy 
who aforetime had been accustomed to play patience 
with her. She looked up alertly, as Tom came 
around the corner of the house ; then she hailed him 
cordially, admiringly. 


92 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“Chubbie ! What a lot of fishes ! And you went 
alone ? Splendid !” 

Tom tried his best to conceal his pleasure at her 
frank enthusiasm. He answered, with the crisp 
elision loved of boys. 

“Enough for breakfast ?” 

“I should say so. Enough for a dozen break- 
fasts. Where did you go.?^ Tell me about it.” 

“Down the canon. Wait a jiff, till I take them 
round to Chang.” And Tom vanished. 

His jiff was a long one; and, when at last he 
reappeared, he was perceptibly cleaner, and he had 
exchanged his mountain boots for patent-leather 
pumps. That was the extraordinary thing about 
Aunt Julia, both the boys admitted in their go-to- 
bed conversations. She never said a word to 
criticise; but somehow she made you know she 
liked to see you dressed up a little and sitting straight, 
not sprawling. And, when she showed how much 
she liked a thing, one really couldn’t well help doing 
it. She would do as much for you, dozens of times. 
Even Tom had found it out, just in the short while 
he had known her. One day, he had said something 
to her about a brooch like one his mother used to 
wear, and now she took pains to put it on for dinner, 
every single night. 

And so, for his part, Tom had taken off his wet and 
creaky boots, and brushed his hair, and rolled down 
his cuffs. He felt quite like a full-fledged society 
man, when once more he had joined his aunt in the 
verandah. Moreover, Aunt Julia strengthened the 
impression by the way she put aside her cards and 
gave to him her whole attention; by the way she 


93 


ON THE TRAPEZE 

questioned him about his catch, and about his plans 
for to-morrow morning. She not only asked him 
questions ; but, what was more rare in Tom’s experi- 
ence of women, she listened carefully to his replies, 
and made short comments which showed him that 
she understood and cared about the things he told 
her. 

At last, when his tide of narration had slowed 
down a little, — 

“Where are the others?” he inquired. 

“Uncle Brooks and Dr. Angell drove out to the 
new bridge, this noon,” Aunt Julia told him. “ There 
was a good deal for Uncle Brooks to do ; he told me 
they would be late home. Buddie — ” 

“I saw him,” Tom interrupted. “He’s out in the 
new tent, flat on the floor beside his latest hero.” 

Aunt Julia looked up suddenly. 

“You think so?” she questioned. 

Her phrase was dubious; but Tom caught her 
meaning. 

“I know so. They are as thick as thieves, the 
two of them. Mr. Kent had it first, and now Buddie 
is catching it, catching it hard. The funny thing 
about it all to me is the way he adores Mr. Kent; 
and, all the whole time, he hasn’t the slightest notion 
that he cares two straws about him.” 

There was no bitterness in Tom’s tone, no envy. 
Nevertheless, something in the boy’s eyes caused 
Aunt Julia to gather up her scattered cards. 

“I was getting desperately lonely, when you 
appeared, Chubbie,” she confessed; “lonesome and 
a good deal bored. It’s nice of you to stay here and 
amuse me. Listen. I’ve just been learning a new 


94 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


game of patience, a hard one that I can’t seem to 
manage. I wonder if you’d be too busy to go through 
it with me, just this once.” 

Two hours later, when Buddie sauntered into the 
verendah upon his father’s heels, he found Chubbie 
and Aunt Julia still bending intently above the 
orderly ranks of laid-out cards. 


CHAPTER NINE 
Teresa’s advent 

T WO thatches of red hair were intermingled. 

The topographer was bending over Buddie 
who, feeling curiously limp and dizzy, was sitting on 
his knee. Tom was fidgetting to and fro beside the 
pair of them, almost voiceless with the fear of conse- 
quences, yet seeking to explain the cause and nature 
of Buddie’s present limpness. 

The topographer, once he had satisfied himself 
that, despite his name, Buddie was not likely to join 
the heavenly host at present, turned an attentive 
ear to Tom’s spluttering explanation. When it was 
evident that no more testimony was to be gained 
from Tom, the topographer spoke, and forcibly. 

“Well, now you have been through a miracle and 
come out alive, I think it is my official duty to 
report the case to Mr. MacDougall, and ask him 
to spank you soundly.” 

Tom quaked at the note of scorn in the topog- 
rapher’s voice. And he looked too much a young- 
ster, himself, to know how to be so stern. Buddie, 
however, although still leaning limply against the 
sturdy shoulder, yet refused to quake at all; but 
cocked his eyes up at the red-brown eyes above him. 

“But you’d have done the same thing, yourself, 
if you’d had our chance,” he murmured faintly. 


96 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


The topographer realized that his oflScial dignity 
was melting fast. The worst of it was, the little 
scamp sitting on his knee was quite aware of the 
fact, and framed his next remark accordingly. The 
topographer was just getting his breath from one of 
the worst frights of his experience. He longed to 
shake both the boys, and give them a large and spicy 
piece of his mind. But Buddie, comfortably settled 
against his shoulder, was so like his own favourite 
young brother at home that, instead of shaking him, 
he merely flung his arm across the boyish shoulder 
and left it resting there. Buddie cuddled to the 
touch, with the gesture of a Persian kitten. That 
was one of Buddie’s peculiar tricks. All energy 
and independence, in short, all boy that he was, 
he responded instantly to any sort of petting. 
Moreover, for some obscure reason, his manliness 
lost nothing by it. 

“Honest now,” he queried cosily, while he cuddled ; 
“didn’t we give you a good run for your money ?” 

The topographer tried his best to stiffen up his 
thawing dignity, tried his best, and failed. In the 
end, he laughed. 

“I should rather say you did,” he assented. 

Buddie felt his normal stiffening coming back to 
him. He sat up and faced his quondam nurse. 

“Well, I am glad I did. You oflScial fellows don’t 
get half the exercise you need. Besides, it was the only 
way I could coax you into taking any notice of me.” 

“I? You?” 

“Yes. You. Me,” Buddie mocked him. “I’ve 
been here almost a month now, and I was dying to 
get acquainted. All I could get out of you, though, 


TERESA’S ADVENT 


97 


was just a ‘Do 1’ now and then. I had do-d as 
long as I could stand it, and so I thought I’d try to 
jar you out of your — ” Then Buddie hesitated. 
After all, even if he wasn’t much but a boy, the 
fellow was topographer, and therefore staff. 

“ My ?” the young man queried. 

Buddie dismissed his questionings concerning man- 
ners, and cuddled back against the sturdy shoulder. 

“Your starch,” he answered flatly. “I thought 
it was time I crumpled it a little bit.” 

The topographer’s laugh showed that his oflScial 
dignity was only skin deep. 

“What do you think about it?” 

“I think I can see a few small creases,” Buddie 
responded. “My only fear is that they may flatten 
out again. I meant to give you enough of a jounc- 
ing to smash them entirely. However — Ouch ! ” 
he added sharply, as he sat up straight once more. 

Instantly the red-brown eyes lost their laughter. 

“Hurt, old man?” he asked. 

“No; not enough to say so,” Buddie answered 
pluckily. “It’s only that the jar seems to have 
lapped over on to me. I’ll be all right, once I get 
straightened out.” 

Tom, who had been calming down a little, once 
more became greatly agitated. 

“Shall I go for Uncle Brooks?” he quavered, for 
stoicism in emergencies was not Tom’s strong point. 

Buddie’s rebuke showed that there was some of 
the inherent boyishness still left inside him. 

“Don’t be an ass. Chub ! Why don’t you go for 
an undertaker, and done with it? I’ll be all right 
in fifty seconds. Give me time.” 


98 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


The topographer passed an inquiring hand along 
down the sturdy, stocky frame. Buddie smiled 
cynically, as he felt it. 

“Trying out my motors?” he inquired. “Sure, 
I’m all right; there’s nothing busted anywhere. 
I’m only a little shaken up with the spill.” 

Involuntarily, the topographer glanced upward. 
About sixty feet above them was the single beam 
that linked the two ends of the approach span of 
their new bridge. The crumpled, broken thicket 
of young bushes, just underneath the beam, told to 
all comers what it was that had caused Buddie’s 
longer tarrying upon this earth. Even with the 
tangled thicket to break the murderous fall, it seemed 
to the topographer little short of a miracle that — 

“Can you stand up, a minute?” he questioned. 

“Naturally, having two legs.” And Buddie rose, 
albeit rather stiffly. 

“ Can you do this ? ” The topographer clasped 
his hands behind his head. 

“Rather. What do you take — Ouch!” And 
Buddie whitened underneath his tan. 

“Where’s the ouch?’' the topographer asked him. 

“Here.” 

“Anywhere else ?” 

“No. My legs feel stiff a little; but that’s all.” 

The young man’s face cleared swiftly. This was 
by no means the first emergency case of his experi- 
ence, although at the start he feared it might be one 
of the worst. 

“All right. It can’t be much but bruises. You’ll 
be lame and sore for a good week to come, a long way 
more sore to-morrow than you are to-day. Still, 


TERESA’S ADVENT 


99 


you were lucky to come out of it as easily as you did. 
You couldn’t do it again, if you tried it, ten times 
running.” 

“Thanks. Once is enough, though,” Buddie 
interposed hastily. 

“I’m glad you’ve had the sense to recognize the 
fact,” the topographer told him a bit dryly. 

Buddie promptly shrivelled at the tone. 

“Honestly, Mr. Hearn, I didn’t mean to give you 
such a scare. It looked easy ; else, I wouldn’t have 
attempted it.” 

Hearn’s accent softened. Buddie, meek, was 
Buddie irresistible. 

“What were you trying to do, anyway?” he 
queried. 

“Just getting across to where the real bridge began. 
We wanted to see what the men were doing with all 
the broken stone they were piling into the wooden 
frame.” 

“ Oh, the concrete work. Well ? ” 

“Well, the only way to see it was to get there. If 
we didn’t walk the plank like little men, we’d got 
to climb up the bank, hanging on by our toenails, 
just about as hard and a long way more ignominious. 
We chose the plank, and we made it all right, going 
out there. ’Twas worth the seeing, too.” And 
Buddie, forgetful of his fast-increasing stiffness, 
waxed enthusiastic at the memory. 

Hearn nodded his red head. His own especial 
training had been all for bridges ; his present duties 
were the intermediate stage that often intervenes 
between one’s studies and the real specialty of one’s 
profession. 


100 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“Glad you liked it. But, if you got over it once 
all right, how did you miss out, next time ? ” 

Buddie’s eyes met Hearn’s eyes steadily. 

“I just missed my footing and went overboard; 
that’s all.” 

“That came near being quite enough,” the topog- 
rapher was saying, when Tom swiftly interrupted. 

“It was no such thing, Mr. Hearn. I played the 
goat, and joggled him.” 

“You — little — ” Then Hearn, glancing up to 
make sure that his words went home, caught sight 
of Tom’s conscience-stricken face, and stayed his 
speech. Instead, “Those your ponies over there?” 
he queried. “ How is it, Buddie ? Can you ride?” 

Buddie laughed a bit shamefacedly at his own 
confession. 

“ I can ; but I don’t care much about it.” 

“Shall I get—” 

“Get nothing. I’d scare Aunt Julia purple, if I 
went home any other way than the way I came out 
here. I’ll manage somehow. How far is it ? ” 

“Five miles.” 

“Jerusalem ! Well, here goes. It can’t more 
than finish me; and at least I’ve just proved that 
I die hard. Go along. Chub, and bring Budge over 
here, that’s a good fellow. I’ll be hanged if I’ll 
walk an inch farther than I have to, to-day.” Then, 
Chubbie gone to fetch the ponies, Buddie turned 
and stuck out his hand to the topographer. “ You’ve 
been mighty good to me, Mr. Hearn, both in the 
way you picked me up and dandled me on your 
knees, and the way you forebore to rub it in that I 
had been behaving like an idiot. Chub wasn’t so 


TERESA’S ADVENT 


101 


very much to blame. I dared him to do it, and no 
boy that’s worth anything will ever take a dare. 
Thank you, lots; and, if you don’t mind, please 
don’t say anything about it, up in camp, and ask the 
men to keep still. Daddy would have a fit, if he 
knew about it, and most likely he’d say things to 
Chub. Therefore, let’s all keep it very quiet.” 

Hearn liked his pluck. But, — 

“ Do you think you can ? ” he asked. 

“Sure. I’ll get after Chub, on the way home, 
and frighten him into keeping to himself his beating 
of his breast. I can do it. Chub is game in some 
things ; but he’s terribly weak-kneed, when it comes 
to a case of wrestling with his conscience. Then he 
kicks up a fearful shindig. Ready, Chub.? Hold 
him, though. I don’t want him to slip his moorings, 
till I get on board.” 

Buddie was rather white about the lips, however, 
by the time that Hearn had helped him settle into 
his saddle; but his lips were smiling bravely, albeit 
crookedly, as he rode away. Hearn stood looking 
after him with no small uneasiness. His recent ques- 
tion as to Buddie’s ability to keep his fall a secret had 
by no means all had reference to Chubbie’s conscien- 
tious scruples. 

His fears were only too well grounded. He re- 
turned to camp, that night, to be met by a message 
from Buddie. If he had nothing better to do, after 
he had had his dinner, wouldn’t he come along up to 
the tent and gossip with a fellow ? And Hearn, who 
was tired and grimy and hungry, who also had any 
amount of ofl&ce work ahead of him and his home 
letter to write before the mail went out, next mom- 


102 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


ing, nevertheless swallowed his cooling dinner whole, 
gave himself a superficial grooming and went tramp- 
ing along the dusty bit of road that led from the staff 
sleeping tent to that of Dr. Angell. He had liked 
the plucky, go-ahead youngster from the start, had 
liked him best of all, that day, when he had taken 
the penalty of his rashness without too much com- 
plaining. Of course, the boys had had no business 
to be skylarking out along the line, without some 
older person to tell them what they might, and might 
not, do. None the less, Hearn confessed to himself 
that he greatly preferred the courage that comes 
after, to the caution which comes before, the final 
catastrophe. Buddie, wondering whether he dared 
walk out across the beam that overhung a drop of 
sixty feet or so, would have been a far less interesting 
spectacle than the Buddie who had walked, and then 
had taken as it came the fall that had resulted from 
his walking. 

Hearn quickened his pace, however, just a little. 
He knew too well that now and then the worst in- 
juries are the slowest to develop. He hoped with all 
his energy that no harm had come to the bullet- 
headed youngster who was slowly winning the heart 
of every man in camp, from Chang the cook to the 
totally irrelevant person who sat about on a stool 
and did violent purple sketches of the pale greeny- 
blue mountains that edged the distant skyline. 

To Hearn’s infinite relief, he found Buddie en- 
throned like a king and lording it over his assembled 
subjects most vigour ously. True, he was as near to 
being pale as his sunburn and tan would allow him ; 
and he was sprawling on his bed on top of a heap of 


TERESA’S ADVENT 


103 


pillows. However, the fact that he was thrashing 
about with an energy that greatly disturbed the 
slumbers of Ebenezer who sprawled beside him, 
coupled with the general serenity written on the 
faces of his subjects, restored somewhat of the topog- 
rapher’s peace of mind. No broken-boned boy, no 
victim of internal injuries could flop about as vehe- 
mently as Buddie was doing now ; and Hearn, watch- 
ing him for a minute, could only come to the conclu- 
sion that the accumulated pillows were merely serving 
to protect from too insistent contacts such portions 
of Buddie’s surface as had not grown callous from 
his month of association with the anatomy of Budge, 
the mustang. 

Despite his prostrate attitude, Buddie hailed him 
riotously. 

“Hello, Mr. Hearn! Come to view the corpus? 
That’s good of you ; and Daddy is longing to con- 
gratulate you on the way you administered first aid. 
You know Mr. Kent? He is the man who sits 
around in the shade and does pictures, while all the 
rest of us are working. Likewise, he is the man who 
taught me, if ever I found I was really going to fall, 
to make myself as loose and flopsy as I could. Did 
it, to-day, all right ; didn’t I ? ” 

“That’s what I thought, when I was trying to 
hold you on my knees.” The topographer laughed, 
as he prepared to seat himself on the edge of the 
bed. 

“Steady!” Buddie cautioned him. “Don’t go 
to sitting down on my leg. Something will be hap- 
pening to us both, if you try that. Daddy says it 
isn’t really injured; but I know better. It’s the 


104 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


colour of a pickled purple cabbage, and it’s swelling 
visibly. Look — out!” But the last word slid off 
into a comfortable cadence, when Buddie realized 
that the topographer was safely seated. 

“How are you feeling, anyway?” Hearn asked 
him then. 

Buddie’s reply was graphic. 

“As if my skeleton had outgrown my skin,” he 
said, and the topographer, with certain of his own 
experiences fresh in his mind, saw no need to press 
his questions further. Instead, he gave to Dr. 
Angell his own version of the accident. 

The doctor’s face cleared, as Hearn went on. In 
spite of the inextinguishable liveliness of Buddie, 
even in spite of his own examination, he had been 
wrestling with grim fears. The details of the topog- 
rapher, who had seen the fall and had gone rushing 
to the rescue, dismissed the most spectral of the 
fears, albeit they deepened the sense of the mirac- 
ulous which had lain over the doctor, ever since 
Buddie, limping suspiciously, had made his tardy 
appearance at the luncheon table. 

When Hearn had finished, the doctor drew a long 
breath of relief. 

“‘Drunken men, idiots, and boys,’” he quoted. 
“ Wherefore let us be truly thankful.” 

“Which am I, Daddy?” Buddie queried irre- 
pressibly. 

“Everything but the first, son,” his father re- 
torted. “Therefore you had a double share in the 
protection.” 

“So long as I get what’s coming to me fairly,” 
Buddie made serene response; “I’ve no especial 


105 


TERESA^S ADVENT 

fault to find. Besides, it’s worth a whack or two, to 
be sitting here like a Chinese idol with you to wor- 
ship. Does anybody happen to know what has be- 
come of Aunt Julia? She appears to be the only 
one who’s missing.” 

Seemingly, nobody did know. At least, nobody 
answered. Instead, Daddy created a diversion by 
inquiring of Hearn whether the work was seriously 
damaged by the thud of Buddie’s fall, and Buddie 
had all he could do, for the next few minutes, to de- 
fend himself from the shower of chaff which rained 
on him from every side. He was still hunting suit- 
able phrases for his own defence, when a little stir 
outside the tent door made them all look up, Buddie 
with the least alertness of any of the group. 

Nevertheless, it was Buddie who spoke first. 

“Hullo, Aunt Julia! Come and join the revel,” 
he invited her with cordial promptness, the instant 
his eyes rested on her face. “You are the only miss- 
ing member of the camp. Where have you been ? 
I haven’t seen you since this noon.” 

Aunt Julia came across the threshold of the tent, 
an eager, excited Aunt Julia, with her eyes shining 
and with two scarlet spots on her cheeks; an Aunt 
Julia who, contrary to camp custom, was arrayed in 
flowery hat and proper gloves. 

“I had to go an errand,” she replied. “It kept 
me just a little later than I thought it would. How- 
ever, I’ve brought you something good, by way of 
making my apology.” 

As Aunt Julia spoke, she stepped slightly to one 
side, allowing the Something to pass in front of her. 
The Something proved to be human, something tall 


106 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


and girlish, something clothed in trim brown gar- 
ments, and equipped with two enormous pigtails of 
yellow hair. 

“May I come in, too, Buddie?” the Something 
queried. 

For just a minute, Buddie gazed at her, his lower 
jaw dangling in utter stupefaction. The next 
minute, he let forth a veritable roar of welcome, — 

“Well, old chap ! Where in the name of 
thunder — ” 

And then, forgetful of his recent injuries, Buddie 
arose and cast himself upon Teresa Hamilton. 


CHAPTER TEN 


BUDDIE POSES 

U NLIKE most surprises, that of Aunt Julia 
was an unreserved success. 

Buddie undertook, next morning, to explain to 
Mr. Kent the exact cause and nature of the success. 
He had sent Teresa out with Tom to view the camp, 
since the condition of his own anatomy led him to 
choose the quiet life for the next day or two. His 
two chums gone, Buddie decided to work off a 
little of his mood of sanctity by taking himself in 
search of the long artist. 

“Sitting is cheaper than standing, for the next 
day or so,” he remarked quite casually, as he and 
Ebenezer lined up beside the easel. “If you really 
want to do us, now’s your chance.” 

The artist looked up in surprise, and then a little 
dubiously. There was a peculiarly enchanting light 
upon the mountains, that day; and he had set his 
easel up, directly after breakfast, and had been paint- 
ing away like mad, to catch it before it faded. And it 
was a fact that Buddie was not likely to fade at pres- 
ent; surely not, if the events of yesterday were to 
be taken as any indication of his being booked for 
an early journey to the tomb. No; Buddie was 
apparently a long way more permanent than was 
the summer glow upon the mountains. None the 


108 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


less, the artist dismissed the puzzled vagueness from 
his eyes and hurriedly called an alert smile to his lips. 
Buddie would keep ; but how about his sudden will- 
ingness to pose.^ Best take it as it came. The 
clouds in the summer sky were not more fleeting 
than were the moods of Buddie Angell. 

“Good for you, old man,” Mr. Kent said heartily. 
“Sure you are willing? I’ve been waiting for you 
to say the word.” And he swiftly gathered up his 
tools and prepared to shoulder his easel. 

Buddie surveyed him with frank disfavour. 

“Oh, I say, what’s that for ? ” he queried. 

“Just to get inside ; that’s all.” 

“Inside?” 

“My studio.” 

But Buddie balked. 

“Not on your life ! I’ll squat down right here, and 
Ebenezer can lie close beside me. He won’t wriggle.” 

“I’m afraid— ” 

“Honest, he won’t,” Buddie insisted. “I’ll keep 
hold of his collar, and you can get him right here, 
with the sun full on him, so. Down, Ebenezer ! 
There ! Isn’t that all right ? ” 

It took some courage on the part of Mr. Kent 
to dampen Buddie’s enthusiasm. Nevertheless, he 
nerved himself to the task. 

“It would make a good photograph, Buddie,” he said 
tactfully. “ Some day, I want to bring out my camera 
and have a try at him. But it — it — wouldn’t be 
quite formal enough for a painting of such a dog as 
Ebenezer. He needs a little different treatment.” 
The artist felt that he was progressing grandly. 
“Instead, I shall have to get you to take him under 



^^But you promised you would pose/’ he reminded 
Buddie. — Page 109. 




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BUDDIE POSES 


109 


cover, to get the right light on him. And then, about 
the pose ? What if you sat in my high-backed chair, 
with Ebenezer leaning against your knees?” 

And then the artist suddenly met with disillusion 
as to his grand progress, for, — 

“Shucks !” Buddie said profanely. “Ebenezer 
and I are just going to sit down here naturally on the 
ground, and you can do us as we are. Afterwards, 
if you want to, you can twist us up into any shape 
you choose, and make your picture that way. It’s 
you that’s the artist. All we have to do is to furnish 
you the faces, and Ebenezer’s hair.” 

“But I must get you in the right positions,” the 
artist urged him feebly. 

“That’s up to you.” And Buddie sought to finish 
the discussion by plumping himself down on the 
turf at what he judged to be a proper focussing dis- 
tance from the easel. “Now fire ahead,” he or- 
dered. “ We’re all ready.” 

Mr. Kent sought to prolong the discussion. 

“But you promised you would pose,” he reminded 
Buddie. 

“Sure. Well, aren’t I?” 

“Not exactly,” Mr. Kent told him, with surprising 
mildness considering the fact that Buddie was sit- 
ting with his hands clasped around his drawn-up 
knees while, at his elbow, Ebenezer was contorting 
himself in pursuit of an escaping fiea. 

“What is it to pose, I’d like to know?” And 
Buddie’s tone was so full of injury that Ebenezer left 
the flea to escape, and came to sympathetic attention. 

The artist tried his best to furnish with a definition 
a word so familiar to him that it had ceased to need 
an equivalent. 


110 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“You — you — are expected to put yourself into 
the position you are to have in the picture,” he ex- 
plained a little lamely. 

“And stay put?” Buddie’s accent was explosive 
with horror. 

“Naturally.” And yet, Mr. Kent had no inten- 
tion of making his answer snippy. 

“Well, of all the — ! But do you mean to tell 
me you can’t draw any boy and dog in the positions 
you like best, and put my head and Ebenezer’s hair 
on them, when you get ready to finish up the pic- 
ture ? ” Buddie asked. 

“I am afraid not.” 

Buddie’s sagging accent betrayed his disappoint- 
ment. 

“I thought you said you were an artist,” he said, 
with the outspoken disappointment with which 
fifteen occasionally punctures the self -poise of fifty. 

The man beside the easel wilted. 

“After a fashion, Buddie,” he confessed. “Really, 
that’s about all.” 

Buddie, who had been picking out a snarl in Eben- 
ezer’s coat, looked up sharply. It did not please 
him to hear the note of sadness in the artist’s 
voice. 

“But you are, you know,” he urged. “Aunt 
Julia knew all about you, and had seen some of your 
pictures in New York. After you had gone home, 
that first night, she told us about them. I’d like 
to see them, too ; they must be awfully pretty.” 

If the artist winced at the phrase, he managed to 
conceal the fact from the watchful eyes of Buddie 
who now was lifting himself up from the ground. 


BUDDIE POSES 


111 


with due precaution as to not disturbing the sleeping 
dogs of the day before. When he was on his feet, he 
held out an apologetic fist. 

“Honestly, I didn’t mean to be rude, Mr. Kent. 
I was half chaffing, anyhow. It’s fine out here ; but 
into the house we go. I promised I’d pose for you, 
and I keep my promises like a little man. Else, 
what’s the use of making any ? ” And, with a sigh 
for the glories of the summer morning, he turned 
his back upon them, and led the way into the primi- 
tive establishment which Mr. Kent politely dubbed 
his studio. 

It took some time to set up the easel. It took some 
more to cajole Ebenezer into adopting the attitude 
which Mr. Kent had mentally chosen for him, weeks 
before. At last, however, all was in readiness ; and 
the artist, taking up a crayon, began roughing in a 
few preliminary lines. Then, — 

“Mr. Kent, can I just wink once or twice?” 
Buddie queried, in a muffied voice. 

The crayon dropped from Mr. Kent’s fingers, and 
he let off a roar of laughter. 

“You poor old chap!” he said, when he could 
speak. “I quite neglected to coach you in the rules 
of the game. Wink, of course, and talk all you like. 
You’ll have to do a little wriggling, too. All is, I 
don’t want you to get too far out of your general 
position. Else, you’d muddle things. And, just 
at the very first, while I am sketching in the outlines. 
I’ll have to ask you to be a little stiller than you’ll 
need to be, as we get on.” 

“Thank you.” Buddie spoke gratefully, albeit 
in the same muffied tone that he had used before. 


112 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


the tone one uses just before the photographer makes 
up his mind to squeeze the bulb. 

Then the silence fell again. The artist, mindful 
of the limits of boyish patience, fell to sketching 
rapidly, anxious to set down the pose which was pleas- 
ing him even beyond his expectations. Buddie, 
meanwhile, sat rigid, his eyes goggling at nothing 
and his teeth shut hard together. At last, however, 
he could undergo the strain no longer. He spoke 
again, still in the muffled voice. 

“Mr. Kent,” he said pathetically; “IVe really 
got to scratch.” 

And then Mr. Kent judged that it was time for 
him to relax a little of his effort, and become more 
entertaining. By way of start, he put a question, — 

“Buddie, who was that nice girl who appeared, 
last night ? ” 

Buddie promptly took the muffler from his voice. 

“Isn’t she a great one? She’s Teresa Hamilton, 
the one I told you about. She is my best chum, ex- 
cept Daddy and Ebenezer and Aunt Julia.” 

Mr. Kent repressed a sudden longing to be in- 
cluded in the same circle with the privileged 
quartette. 

“Is she a New York girl ?” he asked. 

“Not much ! She’s too go ahead in too many 
lines. She can cook and dance and sail a boat and 
nurse little Tootles through the measles without one 
particle of help from her mother,” Buddie responded 
eagerly. 

Mr. Kent shifted the chalk to his other hand and, 
with the right one, made a quick dab on each of the 
eyes in his sketch. 


BUDDIE POSES 


113 


“How did that happen ?” he inquired casually. 

“Why, Sandy and Horace and Duncan all had 
them at the same time, and that kept Mrs. Hamilton 
rather busy.” 

“I should think it might have done,” the artist 
commented, while he made a futile effort to set down 
the new curves about his sitter’s lips. “Well, go 
on.” 

“Well, so when little Tootles came out all spotty, 
she just told Teresa she’d got to put him through. 
Of course, she told her how ; but she did it all right. 
That’s just it; she knew she would.” And Buddie 
ended in a chaos of pronouns, result of his own en- 
thusiasm. 

Mr. Kent made no effort to sort them. He was 
too anxious to get at least a suggestion of the new 
eagerness in Buddie’s face. 

“Where did you know her?” he asked, as alertly 
as he was able, considering both his earlier knowledge, 
and his intentness on his work. 

“At Aunt Julia’s. You know I spent almost a 
year with her.” 

The artist nodded. 

“I had gathered that fact. How did it happen ?” 

“Daddy thought he was going to be ill, and sent 
me,” Buddie made lucid explanation. 

“Your father ?” For the instant, the artist forgot 
his tools, as he tried to reconcile this statement with 
his own observations of Dr. Angell. 

Buddie became increasingly lucid. 

“Yes; at least, they did. And they talked it 
over, and he decided to go away.” 

“ What did he think it was going to be ? ” 


114 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


‘‘Lungs,” Buddie answered simply, and then the 
artist understood. • 

“I am very sorry,” he said. 

“Oh, but you don’t need to be,” Buddie told him 
cheerily. “In the end, you know, it didn’t come off. 
He had had a false alarm. But he hiked off to the 
Adirondacks, and sent Ebenezer and me to stay with 
Aunt Julia. I hated the idea, for I had supposed 
Aunt Julia was as prim as a last-year doughnut; 
but, once I really got inside her, I found she was A. 1. 
We did have great times together ; and so did Eben- 
ezer and her cat. Ask Teresa how we blued Pet- 
Lamb.” And Buddie paused to chuckle, as one does 
chuckle over a well-tried joke. 

“But where does Teresa come in ?” 

Buddie’s reply was characteristic in its unex- 
pectedness. 

“Over the back fence, the morning after I got 
there ; that is, I went over the fence, and Ebenezer 
went through a hole. That is one stunning thing 
about the Hamiltons, anyhow : they have any 
amount of holes, and they don’t seem to care one 
bit. I never saw such nice people, without any more 
airs. They know just how nice they are, even if 
they are sort of poor; and they just take it as it 
comes and don’t apologize. I think it’s very vulgar 
to be always apologizing,” Buddie added reflectively. 
Then his voice grew brisk again. “Teresa and I 
started off just about as we meant to keep it up. We 
were fighting, before you could say Jack Robinson; 
and we’d made it up again, before you knew it. That 
is the way it always has been with the two of us. 
We have had the most awful rows; but we were 


BUDDIE POSES 115 

such good friends we didn’t mind them in the 
least.” 

“She rather looks it,” the artist said, a trifle 
absently. 

Instantly Buddie was on the defensive. 

“Looks fighty ?” he demanded. “She isn’t, then ; 
only just able to hold her own. That’s really all.” 

“No. I meant she looked as if she would be a 
good, steady friend,” Mr. Kent made hasty correc- 
tion. “Then you hadn’t any idea she was coming ?” 

“Not a suspish. That’s the Aunt Julia of it. 
You never get wind of her surprises, until they are 
ready to come off. This one was the greatest ever. 
I knew she was most awfully fond of Teresa; but 
I’d as soon have thought of her digging up Pet- 
Lamb and getting her stuffed, as of her having Teresa 
come out here. She says she had an awful time, 
planning it out; and once she almost gave it up. 
Teresa couldn’t take such a journey by herself. At 
least,” Buddie explained, divided as he was in his 
allegiance between Teresa’s fitness for any sort of 
exploit and Aunt Julia’s sense of decorum; “she 
could have managed it all right, only it wouldn’t 
have been quite proper. Aunt Julia is always very 
strong on the proprieties, you know. There wasn’t 
a soul that she knew, coming, except men. And 
then, all at once, she heard that the undertaker’s 
wife’s mother from there was coming across to Cali- 
fornia. It’s a little town, where you know all sorts ; 
and, as long as she was nothing but his mother-in- 
law, she wouldn’t be too gloomy, so Aunt Julia sent 
a pile of telegrams, night letters, you know, fifty 
words for ten ; and they came through the Junction, 


116 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


yesterday, at six-forty.” And Buddie, exhausted 
by his long explanation, settled back in his chair and 
crossed his legs. “Gee ! I forgot !” he added hur- 
riedly, as he straightened up. 

Mr. Kent stepped away from his easel, took a 
swift look at Buddie, another at his canvas. Then, — 

“That’s enough for this time,” he said. “I’m 
tired, Buddie, and you ought to be. Come along 
and do some trapeze.” 

Buddie rose alertly. None the less, — 

“Too stiff,” he objected. 

“Not a bit. You’ll grow stiff er, if you sit still 
and nurse it. Come along.” 

“But it hurts like thunder, when I stretch,” Bud- 
die urged. 

“Of course it does, old chap. And it’s bound to 
hurt worse, unless you ease up on the stiffening a 
little, before it gets too bad. I’m not going to let 
you do much : just a turn or two on the bars and a 
little swing. You’ll find, in the morning, it has done 
you good ; and you aren’t the one to funk a little hurt, 
for the sake of hurrying back into condition.” 

“No; I suppose not.” But Buddie’s tone was 
thoughtful. However, in the end, it was Mr. Kent 
who had to call a halt. 

Meanwhile, — 

“Who is Mr. Kent, anyway?” Teresa demanded 
of Tom when, their explorations ended, they were 
resting on a mossy hummock, far within the canon. 

“Aunt Julia says he is a very famous artist who 
has things in the Metropolitan. He isn’t a very 
good shot; but he’s a corking juggler,” Tom an- 
swered. 


BUDDIE POSES 117 

“He’s a good man, anyhow,” Teresa said con- 
clusively. 

“ How do you know ? ” 

“His eyes, and the shape of the wrinkles at the 
corners. They look as if he didn’t care much about 
most people ; but they show he hasn’t ever thought 
a mean thing about anybody in his life.” 

“How do you know that ? You haven’t seen him 
but a minute, and that was last night, with every- 
body asking you questions at once.” Tom’s voice 
was skeptical. 

“Suppose it was.^^ I have a pair of eyes, and I 
don’t use them on the end of my tongue,” Teresa 
answered, with a trifle more of spirit than her brief 
acquaintance with Chubbie seemed to justify. “I 
was watching him, while all the rest of you were 
talking ; and I liked him at the start.” 

“Buddie didn’t,” Tom told her. 

“ Well, I’m not Buddie Angell ; I am Teresa Hamil- 
ton. I have my own ideas, not Buddie’s. How do 
you know he didn’t ? ” 

“Said so.” 

“To you?” 

“Yes.” 

“Why not?” 

Tom shrugged his shoulders. 

“That’s for him to tell you.” 

“Then I’ll make him. I generally can get Buddie 
to tell me things, if I keep at him long enough,” 
Teresa said reflectively. 

“I like him, though,” Tom volunteered. 

“Of course. You didn’t need to tell me that. 
And so does Miss Julia — Yes, she’ll always be Miss 


118 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


Julia to me, even if your uncle did marry her. I told 
her so in the train, last night, and she just laughed.” 

Tom echoed the laugh. 

“You’d better tell my uncle, while you are about 
it,” he advised. 

Teresa tightened the ribbon on her left pigtail, 
then flung the pigtail back across her shoulder. 

“I’m not afraid,” she said. Then she returned 
to her former subject. “What is more, Buddie’s 
got to learn to like him,” she said decisively. “I’ll 
tackle him, myself.” 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 


BUDDIE AND TERESA 

B eing Teresa, she tackled him, that same night. 

“But I don’t seem to catch your meaning, 
Buddie,” she said, after a half hour of what appeared 
to her like talking in a circle. “You don’t like him, 
and you do. You think he is a Miss Nancy, and 
you believe, under all his queerness, he is all there.” 
She pondered for a minute. “Certainly he is very 
queer,” she added then. 

Buddie flashed instantly. 

“ What do you know about it ? ” he demanded. 
“Only what you have told me,” Teresa answered 
demurely. 

“ What have I told you ? ” 

“Oh, his circus ways, and things like that. Be- 
sides, I have been watching him, myself.” 

“It isn’t circus ways to be a good, all-round gym- 
nast,” Buddie said defensively. “Besides, what 
does a girl like you get out of watching a man like 
Mr. Kent ?” 

And then Teresa laughed. 

“ ’Fess up, Buddie, like a man,” she ordered him ; 
“and say right out that you have changed your 
mind.” 

“But I haven’t.” 

“You like him better than you did.” 


m BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


Buddie’s eyes belied the pompousness in his voice 
and manner. 

“I have modified my position, not changed 
it.” 

“That’s sneaky, Buddie,” Teresa chid him. 
“ What is it, anyhow, that you don’t like about him ? 
He looks nice to me.” 

Buddie cast a glance backward at the open door 
behind him. Then he dropped his voice to a con- 
fidential murmur. 

“It isn’t sneaky, Teresa ; it is a fact I do like him, 
and he has done no end of things for me, things like 
the trapeze and that. But I can’t quite forget about 
the night we had our accident, coming out here, the 
one I wrote about in my first letter. You know he 
fainted dead away.” 

Teresa sniffed with sudden scorn. 

“And you’ve been making all this fuss about a 
little thing like that, Buddie ? ” 

“It wasn’t such a very little thing. At least, it 
shows — ” 

“It shows how little sense you have,” Teresa told 
him mercilessly. “It isn’t decent to blame a man — ” 

“I didn’t exactly blame him.” 

“Or make fun of him for something he can’t 
help.” 

“How do you know he couldn’t help it ? ” 

“Because he would, if he could,” Teresa argued 
superbly. “It probably isn’t his courage that’s 
wrong, Buddie Angell ; it’s his heart.” 

“What’s the diff, so long as it makes him funky ?” 
Buddie queried. 

But Teresa was stronger in matters medical. 


BUDDIE AND TERESA 


121 

“I’m not talking about the heart we mean in 
Sunday sermons, Buddie,” she told him, a bit im- 
patiently. “I mean the thing inside us that pumps 
and makes the breath go in and out. There may be 
something queer with Mr. Kent’s; you never can 
be sure. Why don’t you ask your father ? Miss 
Julia told me that he said Mr. Kent really was a good 
deal hurt, that night.” 

Buddie sat up straight, and stared across the 
moonlit stretch of country that led away into the 
mysterious shadow-land within the canon. 

“For a fact, Teresa?” he asked slowly. 

“Miss Julia said so.” 

Suddenly, after the way of mankind in a crisis, 
Buddie turned very testy. 

“What makes you call her Miss Julia, Teresa, 
when you know she is Mrs. Brooks MacDougall?” 

But Teresa felt it was time she asserted her dignity 
of sweet sixteen and, with her dignity, her senti- 
ment. 

“I am loyal to the dear old name,” she answered 
Buddie, and the I was heavily underlined. Then 
she swiftly flung away her sentiment. “Where 
going, Buddie ? ” she inquired. 

“I want to find Daddy. I’ll be back, in a few 
minutes.” 

“Now?” 

“Yes. I want to know something.” 

“Know what ?” 

Buddie stared down at her accusingly, as if she 
had been his embodied iniquities rolled into one 
bundle and personified. 

“Know just how great an ass I’ve probably been.” 


m BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


Something in his voice astonished Teresa, and she 
looked up sharply. In the white moonlight, Buddie’s 
face showed worried. 

“Why, Buddie,” she queried hastily; “do you 
care as much as all that?” 

“Shut up, Teresa!” And Buddie fled and van- 
ished in the shadow of the house behind them, leav- 
ing Teresa, out of her past experience of her own nine 
brothers, to account for this sudden change of temper 
in the best way that she could. 

Daddy was downright. 

“No, Buddie; there isn’t a thing the matter with 
his heart. Teresa wasn’t quite so wise as you and 
she thought that she was. Mr. Kent is sound as a nut. 
It’s only that, just now and then, we find somebody 
that faints at sight of blood. They can’t help it; 
they are made so. There was a splendid man who 
started in my class in the medical school; he was 
strong as an ox, and as healthy as a man could be. 
For three days running at the start, he fainted in the 
laboratory. Then he gave up medicine and went 
in for law.” 

Buddie sniffed. 

“I’d have kept at it, till I got over it,” he said. 

“No use. Mercifully, it doesn’t happen often. 
But Mr. Kent isn’t a coward. I’m sorry that you 
called him one.” 

Buddie’s eyes clouded with sudden penitence. 

“I’m sorry. Daddy. I wish now that I hadn’t. 
Maybe, though, he didn’t hear, and Tom won’t tell, 
not if I rub it into him that he mustn’t. If only 
Teresa can be kept from blabbing ! ” 

“Horrid word, that, Buddie,” his father rebuked 


BUDDIE AND TERESA 


ns 

him. “It somehow doesn’t match my idea of 
Teresa, either.” 

Buddie shook his head. 

“Maybe not. Still, girls do talk an awful lot,” 
he observed sagely. Then his accent dropped again, 
“Daddy, aren’t there any healthy men ?” he queried 
pessimistically. 

His father laughed. 

“I surely hope so, son. Why?” 

But Buddie’s pessimism grew blacker. 

“Why, there was you, last year. And now there 
is Mr. Kent; at least, he isn’t ill, but he gets to 
fainting, every now and then. Next thing I know. 
I’ll be hearing that Uncle Brooks MacDougall has 
got something fatal the matter with him. It seems 
to me that it is a very sickly sort of world.” 

Then, for a space. Daddy argued: first to the 
effect that Mr. Kent’s trouble was not illness in the 
least; and then that a great deal of possible illness 
might be avoided, if one took care about the way he 
lived; that it was as much Buddie’s bounden duty 
to use good self-control as it was to keep from using 
poison; that, for the most part, the question of a 
man’s health was left in his own hands for him to 
settle. 

Buddie listened quite intently, so intently that 
Daddy believed that he was making an impression. 
All at once, though, Buddie’s self-rebukings broke 
forth again in a great gulp of woe. 

“But I said he was a coward. Daddy, and I meant 
to have him hear me. Can’t I just explain it to him, 
and tell him I am sorry?” 

But Daddy shook his head. 


124 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“The worst thing about our faults, Buddie, is 
that we never really can undo them. I am afraid 
that the mischief is done, and that you will have to 
let it go.” M 

However, Daddy secretly resolved to explain to 
Mr. Kent Buddie’s mistaken judgement and his 
consequent repentance. He could do it, without 
dwelling too much upon Buddie’s reasons for his 
attitude, and he had a general theory that it was 
only fair to both Buddie and the artist to have the 
matter straightened out. 

Buddie, meanwhile, had made his way back to 
Teresa, who still sat in the white moonlight where 
he had left her. 

“Well.'^” she questioned, as his shadow fell upon 
the turf beside her. 

“It’s so.” Gloomily Buddie cast himself down at 
her feet. “He can’t help it, if he tries.” 

“ Of course. I told you so. But do get up. That 
grass is wet, and you’re only just out of bed, with 
any amount of stiff arms and legs. Get up, Buddie ! 
You will catch your death, if you sit there,” Teresa 
ordered maternally. Then, as Buddie reluctantly 
obeyed her, “Well, what did your father say about 
it all?” she queried. 

“That it wasn’t his heart, anyhow, and that you 
wouldn’t have had any business to be talking about 
it, if it had been,” Buddie said curtly, for his nerves 
were still on edge; and, moreover, he was smarting 
slightly at the maternal tone in which Teresa had 
addressed him. Now and then, a two-year gulf 
yawns widely. 

“I didn’t, till you asked me,” Teresa defended 


BUDDIE AND TERESA 


125 


herself swiftly. “Anyhow, he’s nice, and I mean to 
have all the fun with him that I can.” 

“Maybe he doesn’t care much about girls,” 
Buddie suggested, for his mingled gloom and testi- 
ness were playing havoc with his manners. 

“Who said so?” 

“I only said mayhe,^* 

“Well, who said that?” 

“I did.” 

Teresa contemplated the ribbon on her nearer 
pigtail. Then she flung the pigtail backward with 
unnecessary violence. Then, — 

“Buddie, I really think you’d better go to bed,” 
she advised him. “You are tired; and it always 
makes you cross to get too tired. You’ll feel better, 
in the morning. Good night.” 

She spoke demurely, yet with a trace of malice 
underneath the demureness. Buddie, from past 
experience, recognized the trace, detested it, and 
started to rebel. Then, so cast down was he by his 
late discussion, he lowered his head, stuck his fists 
into his pockets and went plodding off to bed, with- 
out a word in answer to Teresa’s gibes. 

Buddie’s meekness endured a good half of the 
night, although all but the first ten minutes of it was 
carried out in dreamland, where he was sanctimoni- 
ously occupied in offering the other cheek to a smiting 
and vigorous Teresa. Towards morning, though, 
happier dreams prevailed, and Buddie was in full 
career across the plains to vanquish the Indians 
who had attacked Teresa’s dwelling, when he was 
wakened by a tugging at his elbow. 

“Ge’ ou’ !” he observed sleepily. 


126 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


The tugging continued. Buddie gave a vague 
whack in the direction whence it came. Then he 
opened one eye to discover whether or not the whack 
had done its work satisfactorily. He saw Tom 
standing by him ; and Tom, contrary to his custom at 
that hour, was fully dressed. 

“Get out!” Buddie iterated, a shade less indis- 
tinctly. “Go ’way. Chub. You’re waking Eb- 
enezer.” 

“What if I am? He’ll go to sleep again. But 
get up, you lazy duffer.” 

“What for?” 

“Breakfast is ready.” 

“’Spos’n ’tis?” 

“And the canoes are waiting.” 

“Waiting for what ?” 

“Us,” Tom said tersely. “Not you, though, 
unless you get yourself out of bed in a hurry.” 

Buddie rolled over on his other side. Bed was 
sweet to him, at seven in the morning. 

“All right,” he mumbled calmly. “Let ’em wait.” 

Tom laid hold of him now in good earnest. 

“Get up, Buddie. Honestly, you’ve got to; or 
you’ll be left.” 

Slowly Buddie struggled to a sitting posture and 
dug his fists into his sleepy eyes. 

“Left where?” he queried, as nonchalantly as if 
the argument had only just begun. 

With a tweak and a pull and a jounce, Tom had 
him out of the blanket and on the floor. Then he 
went for the bath sponge and brought it, drip- 
ping. 

“Buddie dear,” he said persuasively; “a little 


BUDDIE AND TERESA m 

boy like you needs to have his face washed for him.” 
And he did wash it most thoroughly. 

When Buddie could once more splutter words, — 

“What is all the row about, Chub he inquired. 

Chubbie cast the sponge full into Buddie’s coun- 
tenance, already shining ruddily from its vehement 
scrubbing. 

“Merely that my honoured uncle is about through 
breakfast and ready to launch his bark upon the 
flowing tide. In other words, we are starting up 
the river, in just ten minutes. It’s up to you to 
decide whether you start with us, or whether you 
stop here and finish up your morning nap.” 

Needless to say that Buddie started. Moreover, 
he was the first man at the boats ; for, under some 
conditions, it is quite possible to dress in seven 
minutes and to gobble down a fair amount of break- 
fast in two more. Therefore, when Tom, with 
Teresa at his side, came down the path to the bend 
in the river where the canoes were waiting, Buddie 
hailed them affably from the stern of the last one in 
line. 

“Oh, you finally decided that you would come 
with us, eh ? I was afraid we were going to leave you 
behind. Here, pile in here, Teresa. Chub and I 
want you to paddle us.” 

However, Mr. Brooks MacDougall intervened. 
He knew the river and its tricky rapids ; he had no 
mind to allow the three youngsters to attempt it 
by themselves. 

“Tom, your Aunt Julia wants you to help Mr. 
Hearn paddle her canoe. Buddie, you and I will 
take Teresa, and your father will go with Mr. Kent,” 


128 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


But Buddie disapproved the finality of this 
arrangement. 

“Where will Ebenezer go?’' he demanded. 

“Ebenezer? He will stay in camp, of course.” 

Buddie put one leg outside the canoe. The 
canoe promptly listed to one side; but Buddie was 
too much in earnest to mind that fact. 

“If he stays, I stay. Uncle Brooks,” he said 
firmly. “I don’t want to upset any of your plans; 
but, really and truly, Ebenezer can’t be left to keep 
house by himself. He’d starve.” 

“But the cook will be here, Buddie, and we only 
mean to be gone three days.” 

“Then he’ll be dead from over-eating,” Buddie 
persisted cheerily. “Sorry, Uncle Brooks; but 
you’ll have to take us, or leave us. We hang to- 
gether, Ebenezer and I. Since he was a baby puppy, 
I’ve never missed tucking him up in bed, a single 
night.” 

“ Great lubber ! Time you had,” his uncle growled, 
in mock wrath. “Well, what do you propose to do, 
you young sinner ? It’s time we started.” 

“All right. Put Teresa over into Daddy’s boat, 
and take Ebenezer in here with us. Hi, Ebenezer !” 
And Buddie whistled. 

In an instant, Ebenezer came lumbering down the 
path and halted on the bank beside them, his gray 
eyes alight with pleasurable anticipation, his soft 
ears pricked eagerly. 

“Buddie, he’ll swamp us,” Mr. MacDougall 
protested. 

“Not on your life! Ebenezer is used to the 
water ; he knows he must sit still, whenever he goes 


BUDDIE AND TERESA 129 

out. Steady, Ebenezer !” And Buddie laid a warn- 
ing hand upon his collar. 

And Ebenezer steadied. With infinite care, he 
let himself down into the bottom of the canoe and 
settled himself at the exact spot which Buddie pointed 
out to him. 

“Well, I must say — ” Mr. MacDougall was 
beginning. 

But Buddie interrupted. 

“Good boy; isn’t he? A whole heap better than 
you thought he’d be ? He’ll sit there, all day long, 
and never budge, just watch the water slide by him, 
and the paddles. He was out with us, almost every 
day, last summer.” 

Mr. MacDougall picked up his paddle, dipped it, 
dipped it again, then turned to look at Ebenezer. 
The great dog was sitting motionless in the stern, 
intent and watchful, his gray eyes smiling at the 
river, as it chattered past him. 

“He certainly is discreet, Buddie. He has a wise 
old head.” 

Buddie cautiously stretched himself to reach 
Ebenezer’s brow and administer a pat of approbation. 

“He sure has. And he’d have pined away, if 
we had left him alone in camp. He’s never been 
deserted in his life.” Buddie picked up his paddle 
and settled to the rhythm of Mr. MacDougall’s 
strong, long stroke. After an interval of silence, 
“Uncle Brooks,” he queried, with surpassing meek- 
ness; “when you have plenty of time and nothing 
else on your mind, would you be willing just to tell 
me where it is that this caravan is going ?” 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


BY CANOE AND PONY TRAIL 

E very now and then, it is the seemingly im- 
possible that happens. 

How Buddie had missed hearing about the trip 
on which already he had embarked: this would be 
a long and intricate story in itself. The real secret 
of it lay in the fact that Mr. Brooks MacDougall 
had been waiting for Teresa’s arrival, before carry- 
ing out a plan he had been hugging ever since Buddie 
and his father had promised to join the MacDougalls 
in their camp. Everybody but Buddie had known 
that Teresa was expected; known, too, that the 
expedition was to come off, directly after her arrival. 
Merely because they could not talk to Buddie about 
her coming, they had neglected to talk to him about 
the other plan. And, since her coming, Buddie had 
been too much absorbed in the mere fact of her 
advent to have paid any great attention to a trip to 
the moon, had one been suggested in his presence. 

Moreover, Buddie’s exploration of the bridge, and 
his hurried descent to the lower levels had occupied 
them all, the night of Teresa’s coming. Next day, 
Buddie had spent a good share of the time with Mr. 
Kent, and the rest of it with Teresa, and both of 
them ' had been too much interested in Buddie’s 
conversation to introduce any subject of their own, 


BY CANOE AND PONY TRAIL 131 

even one so thrilling as the morrow’s early departure. 
Now he thought it over, Buddie did remember hear- 
ing some casual suggestion of canoes; but canoes 
had become such a normal detail of his daily life 
that he had thought nothing of the matter, one way 
or the other. 

Expounded to him now, Mr. MacDougalFs plan 
seemed to Buddie all that was charming. They were 
to spend three days in the wilderness ; they were to 
go in canoes as far as they were able; then they 
were to take to ponies and strike into the very heart 
of the range, beyond the sources of the little river. 
Supplies had been sent on ahead, and men to pitch 
the tents, together with a Chinaman who could 
prepare and serve anything from a galantine of 
turkey to his national delicacies born of mice. 

In reality, Mr. MacDougall explained to Buddie, 
this was not a picnic; but a business trip of some 
importance. He had received a letter from an 
Eastern syndicate, asking him to hunt up a water- 
fall said to be somewhere in the region, measure its 
power as best he could, and decide for them whether 
it would be worth their while to buy land enough to 
give them full control of all its rights. Mr. Mac- 
Dougall had heard of the fall, though he had never 
seen it, nor had he any very accurate idea as to 
where it was to be found. As long as he was bound 
to make this tour of exploration, it seemed to him a 
great mistake to make it quite alone. Hence the 
canoes and the loads of supplies sent on ahead. 

The plan unfolded in all its glorious details, Buddie 
shipped his paddle and sank back with a little sigh. 

“Camp out, three whole nights. Uncle Brooks?” 


132 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“Yes. Four, perhaps, if we don’t find it sooner.” 

“And eat out-doors, and sleep on beds of 
bracken?” Buddie demanded poetically. 

His uncle laughed. 

“I don’t know about the bracken, Buddie. As 
long as it is good weather, though, I imagine we shall 
do our eating in the open.” 

But Buddie was not listening to anything but the 
suggestions of his own imagination. 

“And, at night, we shall hear the sighing of the 
forest, mingled with the deeper notes of the hyena ?” 
he queried. 

“Buddie, I never realised how much of a poet you 
were,” Mr. MacDougall told him gravely. 

Buddie accepted the tribute with all due humility. 
None the less, — 

“Most people don’t,” he replied briefly, as he took 
up his paddle. 

However, it would have been hard for anyone, 
that morning, hardest of all for any boy, to have 
accepted life as being mere plain prose. The narrow 
river, winding smoothly away across the open 
stretch of country, twisted and turned upon its 
course, until it came inside the canon where it 
ceased its lazy monotone and chattered sharply 
above pebbly reaches and grumbled at the rocks 
which tried to block its path. Then, as the canon 
walls drew closer to its banks and became more 
rugged, the river ceased its chatter and its grum- 
bling, and fell to roaring defiantly at the rapids in its 
course, rapids white with foam, rapids swirling and 
eddying crazily around jagged points of rock. And 
down the river, now babbling contentedly, now 


BY CANOE AND PONY TRAIL 133 


roaring in its foamy rage, twisting and turning 
between the winding banks, slid the little line of 
canoes, the topographer and Chubbie paddling 
Aunt Julia far ahead, and Buddie and Mr. Mac- 
Dougall bringing up the rear, with Ebenezer upright 
in the stern, staring with interested, fearless eyes 
at the swirling waters and balancing his shaggy 
body as deftly as if his whole life had been spent in 
shooting rapids. Now and then, a bird whirred past 
them. Now and then, a rabbit, startled by this 
unexpected invasion of his solitude, scuttled for 
safety. Once, as they rounded a sharp bend in the 
river, a mountain lion, poised on a point of rock 
above them, shrieked in defiance, as they passed. 
For the most part, however, the forest around them 
was very still, so still that, by degrees, they seemed 
to take the stillness as its right and forebore to 
break it by their jovial calls from one canoe to 
another. 

And then, when the rocky walls had become so 
steep as to be well-nigh bare of trees, and when the 
river, narrowed to the merest thread, had turned 
to a line of churning, lashing foam, Mr. MacDougall 
dropped his paddle, and pointed to the mouth of a 
ravine cutting the nearer wall. 

“There are the horses all right,” he said con- 
tentedly. “I told them to be here at noon.” 

“Noon !” Buddie echoed. 

Mr. MacDougall pulled out his watch. 

“Yes. At least, it will be, in ten minutes. Aren’t 
you getting hungry?” 

For once, Buddie shook his head in answer to that 
question. 


134 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“I thought it was about ten o’clock,” he answered. 
“Where has the morning gone?” 

“Down the river, I suppose, with all the rest of 
us. Well, here we are. Out with you, Buddie. 
We have an hour more ahead of us, before we over- 
take the luncheon. Ebenezer, out you go.” 

And Ebenezer went. Buddie waited, though, 
while he put a question which had been troubling 
him, ever since the moment of his hearing the details 
of the plan. 

“What about Aunt Julia ?” he inquired. 

“About her? How?” 

“Can she ride; or how is she going to be man- 
aged?” Buddie queried bluntly, for somehow he 
had never associated dainty, decorous Aunt Julia 
with a mountain trail taken on a pony. 

“Of course. How else? Everybody has to ride, 
out here,” his uncle reassured him. 

“And she really can stick on, even in the moun- 
tains ? I’d hate like thunder to have her falling 
off,” Buddie urged anxiously. 

“No fear. She can go where I do ; I proved that 
long ago. She is mounting now. Watch her, and 
see if she looks to you as if she didn’t know how to 
stick to anything.” 

Buddie did watch. Watching, his eyes grew round 
with surprise and admiration. One of the men had 
just led forward a frisky little dark gray pony, a 
pony who seemed a trifle uncertain as to the proper 
number of legs which he should keep on the ground. 
The man, still holding the bridle, bent and stretched 
out his hand. An instant later. Aunt Julia had 
sprung into the saddle and was holding the reins 


BY CANOE AND PONY TRAIL 135 

with one hand while, with the other, she gave deft 
touches to the folds of her divided skirt which hung 
about her as gracefully as the trailing frock in which 
Buddie had first beheld her. 

“Cross saddle, too!” Buddie observed. “Well, 
by thunder!” And, an instant later. Budge, with 
Ebenezer pounding after him, had lined up at Aunt 
Julia’s side. 

“You never would have done it, in this created 
world,” Buddie was assuring her volubly; “if I 
hadn’t started the good work by teaching you to be 
a genuine boy scout.” 

It was Teresa, then, and not Aunt Julia, after all, 
upon whom the protective interest of the entire cav- 
alcade was bent. Teresa had climbed trees long be- 
fore she had left off bibs and tie-on mittens. She was 
as lithe as a monkey and as fearless. She could stick 
to any sort of perch, once she could get on to it. The 
only present trouble lay in her getting there in the first 
place, and then in the girlish grace with which she 
maintained her proper grip upon her moving pedestal. 

Three times and four, seven, eight and nine, did 
Teresa plant her energetic foot in some outstretched 
hand and essay to vault into the saddle after the 
lightsome fashion of Miss Julia. Even in her best 
attempt, she only succeeded in twisting her fingers 
into her pony’s mane, and hanging on to it, dangling 
and laughing madly, until she was removed by 
Daddy. Then she lifted her head and gave her 
orders proudly. 

“Laugh, if you like. It’s the funniest thing I 
ever saw, and I can’t half see it; but I’m going to 
manage it in the end. Jim, bring the creature over 


136 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


here beside this log, and hold him very tight. Now 
all the rest of you turn your backs and count one 
hundred, and I’ll get on board somehow, or my 
name is not Teresa Hamilton.” 

Then there was an interval whose silence was punc- 
tuated by little puffs and grunts from Teresa, by 
badly-suppressed chuckles on the part of Jim. 

“Fifty-one, fifty-two,” Buddie counted aloud, 
just as a hint how the time was passing. “How 
are you getting on, Teresa ? ” 

“I am on,” she panted. “No. Wait, Buddie! 
Don’t look yet; it isn’t fair.” 

But Buddie had turned his head for just an 
instant. That instant showed him Teresa prone 
upon the saddle, her trim heels clasping her pony’s 
neck and her yellow pigtails intermingling with his tail. 

“Swimming ?” Buddie queried. “Strike out with 
your left side, Teresa, and get yourself head on. 
Sixty-three, sixty-four.” 

The grunts renewed themselves. Then there 
came an interval of flapping, followed by a thud. 
Buddie’s voice followed the thud, but quite un- 
pitiful. 

“All off?” he inquired composedly. 

“No. Just me,” Teresa responded, with frank 
testiness. “ I’m awfully sorry to keep you all waiting ; 
but I’m afraid I’ve got to begin it all over again.” 

But Daddy objected, albeit mildly. 

“Teresa, we are four good miles from luncheon, 
and our inner mans are shrieking to be fed. We 
appreciate your perseverance; but, if you don’t 
mind, we would prefer you showed it off, this evening, 
after we have dined. Hearn, you look lusty. Would 


BY CANOE AND PONY TRAIL 137 

you mind giving me a hand?” And, the next 
instant, they had picked up Teresa bodily and planted 
her in her saddle, right side up and ready for her ride. 

“Really, though,” Teresa observed reflectively, 
that night; “I hadn’t the slightest idea that it was 
such a piece of work to learn to ride.” 

“I am sure you got on splendidly,” the topog- 
rapher made encouraging reply, from his seat on the 
ground just at her feet. 

All day long, the topographer had kept his eye 
upon Teresa. He was susceptible, and girls were 
scarce in camp life, nice girls like Teresa. And 
Teresa was nice; she showed it in all sorts of little 
ways. Moreover, in spite of the dangling pigtails 
which, up to now, she had steadfastly refused to pin 
up into a seemly coronet, she was by no means a 
child. She had confessed to sixteen, and the topog- 
rapher knew of one sixteen-year-old girl being at 
his junior prom. Wherefore, and for several other 
reasons, he had turned his back upon the older 
men lounging in the door of the tent where Aunt 
Julia sat enthroned, and had joined the trio of 
youngsters in the open. Now, underneath his 
encouragement, his tone had been surcharged with 
sentiment. 

Teresa swiftly shattered the sentiment, by the 
phrasing of her reply. 

“Anyhow, I stuck,” she answered crisply. “ Bud- 
die, what does a pony do when he bucks ? ” 

Buddie refused to be sympathetic. 

“Nothing you’ve seen yet, Teresa, so you won’t 
get any glory on that score. Your brute came 
loping up the trail, steady as a cow.” 


138 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“He kicked, though,” Teresa retorted, prompt 
to defend her own skill in adverse circumstances. 

Buddie continued to be quite merciless. 

“Only when you wolloped all over his back, and 
let your hair tickle him. You are a good, smart 
girl, Teresa ; but it will be some time yet before you 
really learn to ride.” 

Buddie spoke with perfect truthfulness. How- 
ever, Teresa did deserve some credit in that, as she 
phrased it, she had stuck. Indeed, at times that 
afternoon, it had been no mean achievement, the 
clinging somehow, anyhow, to the backs of the 
ponies, as they went slipping and scrambling up 
the narrow, rocky trail. Buddie’s own novitiate was 
not so far in the past that he should have been too 
forgetful of certain chapters in his experience ; 
while, as for Tom, past and present had joined hands 
and shaken violently, so violently that, time and time 
again, Tom had had his match not to be landed in 
an ignominious heap upon the trail. Once he had 
saved himself just as he was sliding impotently back- 
wards, once he had lost both stirrups and had 
floundered wildly until Mr. Kent had come to his 
rescue and once more made connections between 
the rider and his saddle. 

For Teresa, however, there had been no flounder- 
ing. Once she had been confronted by the real 
difficulties of the mountain roadway, she prudently 
had bowed her head upon her pony’s mane, clasped 
his neck with her arms, dug her heels into his chubby 
sides and hung on for dear life, leaving it to his moral 
sense alone whether he should stick to the trail 
ahead of him, or go off prospecting upon his own 


BY CANOE AND PONY TRAIL 139 


account. Therefore it was that, with one single 
exception, Teresa Hamilton was by far the least 
tired one of the party that had gathered about their 
out-door table. She had solved the problem of 
achievement by adapting herself to the unfamiliar 
circumstances swiftly, completely, although perhaps 
not gracefully. And Ebenezer, the one single 
exception, had also adapted himself to his oppor- 
tunities. Luncheon over, he had mounted the one 
cart that accompanied the party to carry the heaviest 
of their camp equipment. Mounted, he totally 
refused to be dislodged. As result, it was a fresh and 
frisky Ebenezer who superintended operations in 
the region of the cook stove, that first night. 

Afterwards, Buddie never could quite forget that 
dinner, eaten out of doors and beneath trees which 
never before had sheltered such a scene. Luncheon, 
taken in rather a haphazard fashion, half way up the 
ravine, had seemed to him all that was perfect; 
but luncheon slid quite out of sight, viewed in the 
glorious light of dinner, a dinner with three courses 
and an entree, eaten from a white cloth by guests 
who sat on canvas seats with backs. To be sure, 
the dishes were only of brand-new aluminium, shiny 
as silver, but far lighter to carry ; and the spoons 
and forks were not of a kind to tempt a raid on the 
part of any passing highwayman. But the China- 
man could cook ; and everybody was so hungry that 
Buddie began to be a little anxious concerning 
Ebenezer’s later feastings. And it was such fun to 
give him the bones without waiting, and to fling your 
olive stones into the bushes. 

After dinner, they sat long around the table. 


140 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


telling stories and talking over their plans for the 
starting, early the next morning. Then the stars came 
out and the dew began to fall, and Aunt Julia de- 
clared that she would be too stiff to ride, next day, un- 
less she went inside the tent. Daddy and Mr. Kent 
had followed, with Mr. MacDougall; but the four 
younger ones with Ebenezer chose to remain outside. 

Even their chatter finally grew intermittent. 
Perhaps they all were a little tired; perhaps the 
stillness of the night-covered forest was throwing its 
spell over them. They had been sitting silent for 
some moments, when a tall shadow fell across the 
ground beside them. 

“Anybody for a walk?” Mr. Kent’s voice said in 
their ears. 

The invitation was quite general; but Teresa 
looked up just in time to discover that the artist’s 
eyes were fixed on Buddie. 

“I don’t know about Mr. Hearn,” she answered, 
with the little air of quick decision which Mr. Kent 
had already learned to know and like ; “but Chubbie 
and I are too deadly tired to stir. You go, Buddie. 
A little exercise may take a bit of the smugness out 
of you, so that, when you get back, you will show a 
little more appreciation of my riding.” 

Nothing loath, Buddie arose and, with Ebenezer 
at his heels, fell into step at Mr. Kent’s side. An 
instant later, they had vanished in the shadows 
underneath the trees. Teresa looked after them 
thoughtfully. 

“Buddie doesn’t adore too easily,” she said. “At 
least, though, when he does, it’s generally thorough- 
going.” 


BY CANOE AND PONY TRAIL 141 


It was a good half hour afterwards that the two 
comrades came out upon a point of rock that over- 
hung the canon. Beneath them in the moonlight, 
the rocky walls swept down and down to lose them- 
selves in blackness far below, a blackness full of the 
whisperings of many treetops, and of the murmurs 
of the river, now babbling cosily to itself within its 
narrow bed. Behind them, a half-grown moon was 
sliding towards a western sky, still violet with the 
glow of the vanished day. Above their heads, the 
stars were already dotting the dark purple archways 
with their myriad points and sparks and dots of 
yellow flame. 

Buddie lifted his hand and touched his com- 
panion’s elbow. 

“Mr. Kent,” he said impulsively; “aren’t you 
glad that you got born?” 

There came a little silence. Then, — 

“Sometimes,” the artist said. 

“Yes; but always?” Buddie urged him. Then 
he added, still more urgently, “Aren’t you, now?” 

For just an instant, Mr. Kent’s eyes swept across 
the starry arch above, across the dusky earth below, 
then came to rest on Buddie’s snub-nosed, earnest 
face. Then he put one hand a little heavily on 
Buddie’s shoulder. 

“Yes, Buddie,” he answered very gravely; “all 
in all, just now I am.” 

Forty-eight hours later, the words came back to 
Buddie very forcibly; and, with the words, their 
accent. 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 


THE WOES OF CAMP 

M erely because, forty-eight hours later, it 
seemed to Buddie and to them all that the 
breath of life had left the artist’s lips for ever. 

It was the next morning early, though, that things 
began to happen wrong. The head teamster gave 
it as his theory of the reason, that the moon had 
changed. The Chinese cook insisted, “Muchee 
gods anglee about no joss.” Whatever the cause, 
the result was most accurately to be summed up in 
the one word dank, 

Mr. MacDougall, optimistic by nature, and well 
accustomed to the summer climate of those moun- 
tains, had made no provision in his plans, almost no 
provision in his preparations, for a rainy day. The 
dawning of the next day, however, showed him that 
they were well in for one, and that one of the worst. 
It began early, just at the time when the sun ought, 
by good rights, to have been showing the world his 
first smile from above the horizon line, began with 
a patter on the canvas that soon changed to a pelt- 
ing, and then to a roaring downpour which put a 
final end to all the morning naps. 

Over the bacon and coffee, everybody smiled 
perkily and said, “How cosy!” By the time the 
bacon was eaten up, though, the deluge began to 


THE WOES OF CAMP 


143 


damp their ardour as already it had damped the 
roof above their heads. Cosiness may be a mere 
matter of four snug walls and a light and happy 
heart; and yet, a ceiling that drips here and there, 
preferably just above the crack between one’s neck 
and the encircling collar, does modify one’s notions 
of exactly what is really cosy. And Mr. MacDou- 
gall, arguing from past summer droughts to future 
rainlessness, had chosen his tents more for lightness 
than for their rainproof qualities. By ten o’clock, 
eight exasperated people were huddled around the 
cook stove with sundry articles of bedding draped 
across their laps and shoulders. 

“When is a roof not a roof ?” Buddie inquired at last. 

Teresa, enveloped, head and all, in a bright red 
blanket, peered out from her swaddlings and made 
a grimace of disdain. 

“When it’s aleak. Give us something fresher than 
that, Buddie. You stole that from Sandy’s oldest list.” 

Buddie cast a warning glance up at the roof, 
whence a dribbling stream had just aimed itself 
down upon his head. 

“Stow that,” he ordered. “My back is no drain- 
pipe.” Then he turned to Teresa. “Anything can 
keep fresh, this weather. It is calculated to revive 
the juices in a palmleaf fan.” 

“But how long do you suppose it is going to keep 
it up ?” Mr. MacDougall’s voice, muffled a little by 
its enwrapping blanket, yet sounded fretty. 

The question was directed to the general group. 
It was his wife who answered it. 

“Brooks, we are so glad it was you who asked that 
question. We all have been longing to ask it ; but 


144 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


we felt that it might not be quite polite for guests to 
be too critical/’ 

There was a convulsive twitching of the blanket 
which covered Mr. MacDougaU’s back. It looked 
as if, somewhere in the core of the bundle, somebody 
had meant to shrug his shoulders. 

“I’m not responsible for this confounded weather,” 
he said then. “Nobody ever knew a storm like 
this, in summer, out in these mountains.” 

“Everything has to have a beginning,” Mr. Kent 
remarked, from the further side of the stove, where 
he was trying to dry out his left shoe without dis- 
playing his stockinged foot too prominently in the 
eyes of Mrs. MacDougall. Mr. Kent’s corner had 
been directly in the path of the worst of the drizzle, 
and he reluctantly had pulled himself out of bed to 
face the fact that one of his solitary pair of reachable 
shoes was holding a good teacupful of water. 

It was Buddie who had consoled him. 

“What are you grumbling about, anyhow, Mr. 
Kent?” he had demanded most unsympathetically. 
“It was only yesterday that you were bragging to us 
all that your shoes were watertight.” 

And it was Buddie now who answered him. 

“ It’s got to have a beginning,” he assented. “The 
only question in my mind is whether it’s also got to 
have an end. Teresa, you have a good, stout blan- 
ket on your back. What if you just run out and 
take a look at the western sky? Maybe it shows 
signs of clearing.” 

No signs of clearing came, however, until nearly 
noon. By that time, the little group around the 
stove had recovered from their earlier mood of exasper- 


THE WOES OF CAMP 


145 


ation, and were inclined to accept the whole episode, 
discomfort and all, as being one prodigious joke. 
It had been next door to the annoying to be routed 
out of bed at some unearthly hour, by having a 
thread of water come trickling down across one’s 
brow. Tragedy changed to comedy, when one sat, 
all morning long, wrapped in a blanket, after the 
fashion of an Indian brave, and kept one’s feet either 
on the edge of one’s neighbour’s chair, or on the 
stove, because the tent floor was fast turning to the 
likeness of a lake. And when the Chinese cook 
donned the one pair of goloshes that the camp af- 
forded, and sought to make room for his pots and 
kettles among the encircling feet, the last of the sense 
of injured innocence vanished before the rising wave 
of hilarity. 

“Poor old Wang!” Aunt Julia wiped her eyes 
upon a corner of her blanket. “I thought I had 
seen domestic difficulties before this; but now I 
know they were mere imagination and nerves. 
Brooks, do make him understand that it will be all 
right, if we just have boiled potatoes with the chicken. 
The poor creature can’t cook, without the stove; 
and, if he uses the stove for our dinner, where in the 
world are we going to put our feet ? ” 

But Buddie and Hearn reappeared, just at that 
minute, from the tour of investigation they had 
made outside. Buddie’s face was smiling broadly, 
and the topographer was armed with a small shovel. 

“Party’s over,” Buddie announced. “It really 
does begin to look like clearing. It’s only drizzling 
a little now.” 

“But what about the shovel?” Aunt Julia 


146 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


queried, as she cautiously lowered the corner of the 
blanket which had served as hood, and drew a long 
breath of relief, for, despite the dampness, the tent 
was waxing hot. 

Hearn laughed. 

“Getting warm, Mrs. MacDougall? I bought 
those blankets, and the chap who sold them told me 
they were all wool. The shovel.^ It’s what we 
might as well call anti-irrigation.” And, with deft 
strokes, he cut a shallow trench across the floor of 
the tent, and then connected it with a deeper trench 
outside. 

Aunt Julia watched the subsiding floods approv- 
ingly. Then, with a proper degree of care, she low- 
ered her heels to the ground, but sat with her toes 
turned sharply upward. 

“Such a relief !” she said. “Mr. Hearn, you de- 
serve an addition to your salary. It’s all very well 
to put our feet on the stove, as long as it doesn’t 
spoil our chances for dinner ; but the look in Wang’s 
eyes was beginning to make me nervous.” 

Buddie, however, took a more cheery view of the 
matter. 

“Wang can make* even our boots into something 
eatable,” he averred, nodding at the blue-smocked 
Oriental by way of making his compliment carry 
home. “About the rain, though, that’s another 
matter. I honestly think that the worst is over and 
that, right after lunch, we’ll be able to get on.” 

Luncheon over, though, the prospect of getting on 
seemed as remote as ever, perhaps even a little more 
so. Earlier, the rain had come splashing down with 
a fury which betokened that it must cease soon, if 


THE WOES OF CAMP 


147 


only from sheer lack of moisture overhead. Now, 
on the contrary, it had settled into a mildly persist- 
ent drizzle that might keep on indefinitely, a drizzle 
that accomplished a vast amount of wetting in pro- 
portion to the actual supply of moisture it employed. 
Buddie, once more sent forth like Noah’s dove, came 
back a little downcast. 

“It’s got its second wind and settled down to a 
steady gait that, unless something turns it off, can 
keep up for a week of Sundays,” he reported. “It’s 
all right to go out for a walk, if one has a camp in 
the oflSng; but Aunt Julia and Teresa would be 
soaked, if we tried to move camp.” 

His uncle repressed a smile at Buddie’s magnificent 
use of the we; but he assented, — 

“No use to break camp, Buddie. We’d best stay 
on here. Still, there is no especial use in sitting still, 
all day. Who wants a walk ? ” 

Teresa did; but Aunt Julia finally succeeded in 
convincing her that such a storm was only good for 
girls who had a change of skirts in easy reach. Tom 
elected to stay with them, not that he objected to 
getting wet, but because his aunt’s radius, in these 
latter days, was fast becoming his own. Since his 
mother had left him, to go on into the mysterious 
Beyond, no woman’s voice and touch had counted 
much to Tom, until he had found Aunt Julia, and 
the long rainy morning of idling at her elbow had 
made him feel as if certain of the old days had come 
back again. Therefore, he preferred to stay and 
have the good of the experience. 

The topographer stayed, too, and talked about a 
game of euchre, for he had a shrewd eye for com- 


148 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


binations, and he foresaw that, if he kept still and 
hung back a little, he might find Teresa left over to 
be his partner. Unhappily, he did not foresee Te- 
resa, who assented eagerly to his suggested game. 

“Splendid!” she said. “Chubbie, I’ll be your 
partner : youth against age, you know.” And then 
she laid her hand in Aunt Julia’s lap, in mute appeal 
to be forgiven for her inadvertent hint that Mrs. 
MacDougall was no longer young. 

Meanwhile, the remaining quartette went faring 
forth, regardless of the weather and only bent upon 
a tour of exploration. At the turn of the road, they 
had to stop and wait for Buddie who had been forced 
into a little argument with Ebenezer. Ebenezer 
loved to get wet, soaking, sopping wet ; but his plans 
for happiness also included a hot turkish towel, and, 
in view of the narrowness of camp supplies, Buddie 
judged that it would be quite as well for Ebenezer 
to remain under cover. Like Teresa, his getting 
wet demanded a prompt change of skirts. 

Ebenezer at last convinced, and conducted back 
inside the tent, Buddie went rushing back to the 
others and then, their caps pulled down above their 
ears and eyebrows, their collars turned up and their 
shoulders shrugged together, they struck out along 
a trail which led away into the bushes at a sharp 
angle from the one which had brought them to their 
camp. The tents, for the sake of airiness and cool- 
ness, had been pitched in the open, just on the top 
of a small hillock where the full force of the storm 
had beaten down upon them. Among the bushes, one 
felt the rain much less ; the patter on the leaves made 
far less noise than on the taut canvas of the tents, 


THE WOES OF CAMP 149 

and the boughs above their heads carried away the 
worst of the drip. 

Accordingly, it was with a sense of lessening storm, 
of comparative comfort, that the four of them struck 
out along the trail which turned and twisted like a 
curly thread among the trees and through the under- 
growth, lost itself completely in a little open glade, 
found itself again under some more trees, and then 
vanished finally in a thicket which, after the order of 
Melchisedek, appeared to be without beginning and 
also without end. 

“What takes me,” Buddie remarked, after vainly 
thrashing about in the undergrowth for several 
minutes; “is the way we got inside this thing, with- 
out being aware of the fact.” 

Mr. MacDougall adopted Buddie’s form of phrase. 

“What takes me,” he said; “is the way the rain 
seems turning into a fog. Moreover, I don’t like 
it.” 

Buddie cast a hasty glance about him. Then he 
turned to the tall artist who stood waiting, ten steps 
ahead. 

“I say, Mr. Kent,” he demanded; “do you see 
any landmarks anywhere, from up aloft?” 

The artist shook his head. 

“I’m not above the fog-line, Buddie,” he re- 
sponded. “Get down on the groimd and listen. 
Maybe you can hear the trail running off somewhere.” 

“But, really, I don’t like this thing,” Mr. Mac- 
Dougall iterated, and now his face showed true 
uneasiness. “This fog is getting thicker, every min- 
ute. Do any of you happen to know the shortest 
way back to the camp ? ” 


150 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


Dr. Angell turned to his young son. Whatever 
he thought about the fog, his face betrayed no signs 
of anxiety. 

“Scout,” he said ; “I think this ought to be a case 
for you.” 

“Not guilty,” Buddie told him promptly. “I 
wouldn’t take it on myself to watch the trail, when 
we have Uncle Brooks along. But, honestly, does 
anybody think we’re lost ? ” 

“Honestly, Buddie, somebody does think it,” his 
uncle told him. “What is more, he thinks that 
somebody thinks true.” 

If his own boyhood were so remote from Mr. Mac- 
Dougall that he expected Buddie to show consterna- 
tion at the tidings, he was doomed to disappoint- 
ment. Buddie elevated one leg in mid-air, and used 
the other as a pivot for much joyful spinning. 

“Ripping!” he said. “Oh, bully! I’ve always 
wanted to get lost, and now we’ve done it. What 
do we do next : go out exploring, or sit down on our 
heels and wait till it clears ?” 

“Both,” his uncle told him crisply. “One of us 
must stay here, as a steady point of hail. The other 
three can go exploring. Angell, will you stay here ? 
And will you call to us, once every minute by your 
watch, call and make sure that we answer ? Kent, 
will you start out that way ? Buddie and I will try 
this.” 

Buddie balked. 

“I want to go, my ownsome,” he objected. 

“Impossible,” Mr. MacDougall said, and Daddy 
reinforced the saying. 

“All right, then. Two to one, and I am downed,” 


THE WOES OF CAMP 


151 


Buddie replied serenely. “If I must go double, 
though, Uncle Brooks, I’m going with Mr. Kent.” 

Even Daddy looked surprised at this decision. 

“ What’s that for, Buddie ? ” he asked. 

Buddie’s reply was refreshing in its candour. 

“Because everybody knows that artists aren’t 
supposed to have much sense,” he said. “I want 
to go along, to make sure that Mr. Kent gets back 
all right.” 

And the end of all things proved that it was as 
well that Buddie held to his decision. 

It was only twenty minutes afterward that, to 
Buddie’s full belief, the end of all things came. He 
was quite sure about the interval, because he knew 
just how many times Daddy had called and they 
had answered. Shoulder to shoulder, the tall, agile 
man and the sturdy boy had made their way along 
through the ever-thickening fog, talking little, merely 
hunting for the trail and listening for the calls from 
Daddy, standing still, watch in hand, somewhere in 
the milk-white distance. Then suddenly Mr. Kent 
spoke. 

“Buddie, I think I see a tree over there that I 
remember noticing, as we came up here. It’s the 
right shape ; and, if it is the one, it has a round, flat 
stone like a toadstool just beside it. You stay here 
and answer the call, while I just go over there to 
look.” And, an instant later, his tall, lithe figure 
was dimming in the fog. 

“All right ?” Buddie called after him, once he had 
answered Daddy’s hail. 

“I think so. I can tell, in just a minute. Ah- 
h-h-h-h !” 


152 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


The words ended in a little cry, half of surprise, 
half of something else, something far less reassuring 
to Buddie’s waiting ears. They were followed by a 
crashing, a breaking of the bushes, by the jarring fall 
of a loosened boulder and by another fall, a duller, 
thudding one. And then all the sounds ended in a 
silence more frightful far than the sum total of them 
all. 

The silence lasted a full minute. Then it was cleft 
by Buddie’s voice, shrill with a sickening, agonizing 
fear. 

“Mr. Kent!” he called. “Have you fallen? 
Are you hurt?” And then, shriller and more ago- 
nized, he sent out a piercing shout for help from 
the one human being who would never fail him. 
“Oh, come quick ! Quick ! Oh, Daddy, Daddy, 
Daddy !” 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

INDIAN BILL COMES BACK 

“T WISH we were well out of this,” Dr. Angell 

A said, an hour later. 

Mr. MacDougall nodded. 

“I hate the night,” he said tersely. 

“So do I, and for more reasons than one.” Dr. 
Angell glanced back over his shoulder towards the 
spot where Buddie squatted on his heels beside an 
improvised couch of pine boughs. “First aid is all 
very well in its way; but I’d like something a bit 
more final. I’ve things enough in camp to meet 
most emergencies; but every hour like this is a 
distinct disadvantage.” 

“Kent is a good fellow,” Mr. MacDougall said, 
a little bit irrelevantly. “You don’t feel worried?” 

“Not really. Not at all for the final result. For 
the rest of it, I do. It’s a nasty break in a nasty 
place, and I’d like to get him under cover, where I 
can look out for it.” 

“Lucky thing for him that Buddie was with him,” 
Mr. MacDougall said reflectively. 

“Still more lucky that he wasn’t killed. That’s 
a miracle I shall never comprehend.” 

But his companion disagreed. 

“ The miracle was that Buddie kept his head, and 
stayed on the spot as guide for us. Most youngsters 


154 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 

would have shouted for help, and then gone dashing 
off to the rescue, without leaving us any sort of no- 
tion as to what the fuss was all about.” 

“That isn’t Buddie,” Buddie’s father said, with 
some decision. 

“It is plain, unadulterated boy, though,” the other 
man declared. “It’s as well for Kent that Buddie is 
the exception, not the rule. But how the boy ever went 
down the cliff in the time he did and without break- 
ing his neck : that will always be the mystery to me.” 

“He was ahead of you, then ?” Dr. Angell knew 
the facts of the case by heart ; but he could not re- 
sist the pleasure of hearing his companion go over 
them once more. 

“Yes. I though I was quick; but he was a long 
way ahead of me. By the time I was down there, 
he had managed to pry and tug Kent into some sort 
of a comfortable position, and was off in search of 
water. Deuce knows where he found a spring ; but, 
as I stopped to get my breath, he ran past me with 
his handkerchief asoak in his cap. Before I was 
really on the spot, he was down on the ground beside 
Kent, swabbing off his face in the most approved 
scout fashion. He was perfectly steady, till Kent 
opened his eyes and sneezed — some of the water 
apparently had gone wrong — and then he began to 
blubber like a baby ; but he never left off his swab- 
bing, for all that.” And Mr. Brooks MacDougall 
blew his nose resoundingly, at the memory. 

Daddy merely gulped, to down, not his emotion, 
but his pride. He was quite convinced in his fatherly 
mind that the world would have lacked a famous 
artist, had it not been for Buddie’s promptness. 


INDIAN BILL COMES BACK 


155 


Moreover, there was some ground for Daddy’s 
pride. In the face of an accident which might have 
sent many an older man into a panic, Buddie had 
kept his wits and, what was far more useful to him, 
his common sense. Instead of shrieking for help, 
and then bolting off to the rescue, leaving the help 
to find the way by purest intuition, Buddie had real- 
ized that he must stop just where he was, the one 
link between the rescuers and the rescued, and wait 
to speed them on their way. That done, however, 
there was nothing in the world to prevent his out- 
speeding them, and Buddie had accomplished that 
with a total disregard of his own safety which was 
little short of the appalling. 

Nevertheless, Buddie was human, and he was very 
fond of Mr. Kent, albeit quite unconsciously. There- 
fore, it would be no use to deny that he had a minute 
or two of being very panicky. The crashing and 
the thudding had been bad enough. The stillness 
that came after, though, was the worst of all. It was 
a wholly terror-stricken Buddie who had let off the 
succession of calls for Daddy. Calling, he had been 
surrounded by visions of the worst end possible. By 
the time Daddy had appeared, however, with Mr. Mac- 
Dougall by his side, Buddie had steadied to the need. 

His explanation of his call was short and clear. 
Mr. Kent had gone forward just to that third tree. 
There the earth had given way beneath him. By the 
sounds, it must have been a long fall into a ravine 
beneath, and boulders, not very large ones, must 
have fallen with him. And Daddy, who knew that 
Buddie was summoning all his woodcraft to his as- 
sistance, listened intently. Then he had given it 


156 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


into Buddie’s hands to find a trail down the cliff to 
the scene of the disaster. 

Buddie was quick to find the trail, quicker to fol- 
low it; and Mr. MacDougall and the doctor, de- 
spite their weight and years, made a respectable 
showing in the rear. None the less, it seemed a 
century to Buddie, before they stood beside the luck- 
less artist who lay where he had fallen, with one leg 
doubled under him and his breath coming and going 
quickly under Buddie’s vehement ministrations. 

“Is it all right. Daddy?” Buddie questioned, in a 
breathless whisper. “He was all twisted over, with 
his head on his knees and fainted quite away. I 
straightened him over on his back and put on water. 
I knew he’d never get right, doubled up like that.” 

“Never,” Dr. Angell echoed, with some energy, as 
he slipped his hand beneath the artist’s waistcoat. 
He held his own breath during a moment of anxious 
waiting. Then he nodded. “Buddie, you’ve made 
good,” he said. “Without you, though — No; lie 
still, man !” he broke off to say abruptly. “You 
are all right. You’ve had a bit of a tumble, and I 
want you to keep quiet, till you get your breath a 
little and allow us to get ours. What tumble ? Oh, 
a small matter of an hundred feet or so. You walked 
off the edge of things in the fog. Evidently you 
are born for hanging. Else, you wouldn’t have come 
out so well. Buddie’s bridge exploit wasn’t a cir- 
cumstance to this.” 

As Daddy spoke, he turned to cast a reassuring 
glance at his son. His son, however, half hidden be- 
hind a clump of bushes, was digging into his eyes 
two smudgy fists and a most doubtful-looking hand- 


INDIAN BILL COMES BACK 157 


kerchief, and, meanwhile, doing his level best to 
smother his feelings behind a hacking cough which 
would have gained for him admission to any tuber- 
culosis sanatorium in the land. 

“Where is Buddie?’’ Mr. Kent asked faintly. 
“I had to leave him up there, you know.” 

Buddie gave one final strangle. Then his emo- 
tions yielded to his irrepressible sense of fun, and he 
emerged from his sheltering thicket. 

“Shame you didn’t take me with you, Mr. Kent. 
You had a monopoly of the shortest path ; I couldn’t 
keep up with you, to save my neck. Still, you lit 
harder than I did.” 

The artist craned his neck a little, to look up in 
the direction of the voice. The exertion was too 
much for him, however, and he went quite white 
about the lips. Again Daddy’s hand, as if by acci- 
dent, slid up along his body ; but Daddy’s voice was 
cheery, nonchalant. 

“Come and sit down here, Buddie. Mr. Kent 
wants to be sure you got down all right. No; sit 
a little farther back, where he can use your knee for 
a pillow. That it, Kent ? Yes, he’s all here. You 
can’t lose him in any sort of fog. And now about 
you ? Feeling a little dizzy ? And a wee bit 
sickish? All right. Just lie still. We none of us 
mind resting up a bit.” 

It was a good many minutes later that Dr. Angell 
spoke again. In the meantime, he had moved around 
to Buddie’s other side, and stood where Mr. Kent 
by no possibility could see him. He could see Mr. 
Kent, though, and his trained eyes took note of every 
change of colour and of expression in the face before 


158 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


him. At length, he once more came out from the 
lee of Buddie’s elbow. 

“Feeling better, Kent? That’s good. Any aches 
and pains in particular? How about your leg? 
Well, no wonder. You must have come down on 
it, come down hard. Besides, it is rather twisted 
under you. Now,” and the doctor’s voice was 
curiously quiet, curiously full of strength; “keep 
steady as you can, Kent, for I’ve got to hurt you, 
dear old chap. Hang on to Buddie’s fist for a min- 
ute; it may help.” And the doctor shut his teeth, 
as he bent above the artist. “There !” he said, and 
the bone grated into place. “I hope the worst is 
over now. How is it, Kent ? Pretty bad ? ” 

The beads of sweat hung on the artist’s face ; but 
his reply came with indomitable pluck. 

“ Not too bad. Did I pinch too hard, Buddie ? ” 

But Buddie’s pluck had vanished utterly. Mr. 
Kent smiled up at Daddy ; then he put his hand on 
Buddie’s knee. 

“I’m all right, old man,” he said. “It might be 
worse, lots worse. You and I are too good athletes 
to be knocked out by a thing like this.” 

The doctor looked at him approvingly. 

“I’ll be hanged, if you haven’t got good grit, 
Kent,” he said. 

“Why not?” And then, “Perhaps I need it,” 
David Kent added, after an instant. 

“You will, if you don’t keep quiet,” the doctor 
ordered him. “Now stop talking and lie still. Bud- 
die, you cuddle up against his back, and give him 
something he can rest against. No; closer than 
that. So. Now, Kent, old man, MacDougall 


INDIAN BILL COMES BACK 


159 


and I are going after wood. You’ve had a break, not 
a bad one ; but we want to get your leg into an apol- 
ogy for some splints, so that we can get you home.” 

The doctor’s accent still was nonchalant, careless. 
Kent mentally thanked him for it, though it did not 
deceive him in the least. Not for nothing had he 
spent a good share of his time inside gymnasiums; 
he knew as well as any surgeon what breaks were 
the bad ones, knew his own would be reckoned of 
their number. None the less, there was nothing 
especial to be gained by giving tongue to one’s pro- 
spective woe. Therefore Kent smiled pluckily up 
at the doctor. 

“Sorry to be muddling things for you like this; 
but don’t go to worrying about me. Strap me up, 
so that I can’t hurt myself, and go — No, confound 
it ! You can’t well go into camp for help. Really, 
MacDougall, you must be wishing you hadn’t in- 
vited me for this trip.” 

Brooks MacDougall spoke crisply. 

“For you, I am. For me, Kent, I’m glad of the 
chance to see the stuff you are made of.” 

The artist made a little grimace of disgust. 

“All-fired brittle stuff, MacDougall. I’m no end 
sorry I was so indiscreet as to fall from grace. Now 
go along and buy my splints. Steady, Buddie ! 
Am I too heavy for you ? ” 

Buddie flung a protecting arm across the artist’s 
shoulders. 

“ I like to do it,” he said. “Besides, even if you did 
hurt me, it would only just begin to square things up.” 

However, not all the artist’s later urging could 
bring Buddie to divulge his real meaning. 


160 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


Once safely out of hearing, Dr. Angell freed his 
mind. 

“It is about as bad as they make them, Mac- 
Dougall, fracture of the upper leg and a nasty twist 
to the knee. It’s my belief that the leg will mend 
before the knee does — if it ever does. And it would 
be a bitter thing for a man like Kent, a man who 
worships that fine lithe body of his, to have to end 
his days with a stiff knee.” The doctor shut his 
teeth. “If only this confounded fog would lift!” 
he said from between them. 

Mr. Brooks MacDougall peered this way and that 
through the milk-white blanket which seemed pressing 
down on them more thickly with each passing minute. 

“What do you propose to do.^” he asked a little 
impotently, or so it seemed to the doctor whose 
nerves were all on edge with this stern demand on 
his professional skill and resourcefulness. 

“Get the poor chap into splints as soon as ever 
I can. You’ll have to sacrifice your shirt in the pro- 
cess, too. Now and then, it would be well if men 
wore petticoats. Then we shall have to cut some 
sort of springy boughs for a bed, and lift him on it. 
It’s no use to try moving him, till the fog breaks and 
we can find out how far we are from camp. How 
long do they generally hang on ? ” 

“The fogs.'^ We don’t have them often enough 
to gain any ideas about them. You think Kent is 
down and out ? ” 

“For the present, badly. For the future, I can’t 
tell. His health is perfect, and he hasn’t an ounce 
of extra fiesh to complicate things. Still, it’s an 
ugly break.” 


INDIAN BILL COMES BACK 161 

Mr. MacDougall frowned. 

“ Lucky for him he had a doctor in reach.” 

“Yes, all in all — Hush! Is that Buddie hail- 
ing?” The doctor’s sudden whitening showed the 
alarm he was trying his best to hide. 

“That’s Buddie, right enough. He sounds cheer- 
ful, though. Oh-h-h-e-e ! Buddie!” his uncle sent 
a counter hail. 

Buddie caught the answer. In response, he de- 
livered himself of a long oration, although the muf- 
fling blanket of the fog prevented either his father or 
his uncle from making out one single word. 

“Anyway, he’s cheerful,” the doctor said. “It 
evidently is all right, unless Kent’s nerves rebel at 
such a row. Let’s hurry back and find out what is 
happening.” And, shouldering the bundle of sticks 
he had been fashioning, he set out along the trail in 
the direction of the voice. The voice met him on 
the way. This time, it was understandable. 

“There’s somebody coming. Daddy, coming down 
the trail from up above. I heard him whistling and 
thrashing about, up there in the fog, and I hailed 
him. That was what you heard. He answered, 
and he’s coming now. Maybe he can help us out. 
Splints ? Oh, I say, what can I do. Daddy ? ” 

“Keep quiet, and give Mr. Kent something to 
rest against. Kent, we’ve got to hurt you some 
more ; but there doesn’t seem to be much other way.” 
As he spoke. Dr. Angell was taking off his shirt and 
methodically reducing it to three-inch strips. “Now 
yours, MacDougall. No, Buddie; this will do to 
start on, and I’d rather you stayed just where you 
are. Now, Kent, old man, can you stand it ? ” 


162 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


He stood it, as most people do stand things, be- 
cause he must. Daddy was skilled and very, very 
gentle. Nevertheless, there is a wide difference be- 
tween the gentleness of a hospital and that which is 
possible in a woodland surgery. Mr. Kent was 
breathing badly, by the time the splints were put in 
place ; but his blue lips had never lost their plucky 
little smile. 

“There!” The doctor scientifically tore open 
the last inches of a shirt-sleeve bandage, and knotted 
the two ends strongly around the splints. “That’s 
all, Kent. You’ll do all right now, till we can get 
you home and into plaster. You may not be beauti- 
ful ; but I assure you that the worst is over. Well, 
by all that’s lucky ! Bill I ” 

For, though all four of them had been too much 
absorbed to notice it, the sound of approaching steps 
and of crashing bushes had been growing louder. 
Now, with one final crackle, the last screen of bushes 
was swept aside, and in the opening stood Indian Bill. 

“Plenty bad trail,” he grumbled. “What’s the 
matter ? Man hurt ? ” 

“A broken leg; that’s all,” the doctor answered, 
with professional lightness. 

But Indian Bill took a more gloomy view of things. 

“That is very bad. Sometimes men die of broke 
legs,” he remarked pessimistically. “What doing 
here?” 

“Same thing you are, you old fraud,” Buddie told 
him. “We’re lost.” 

Indian Bill shrugged his shoulders. 

“I’m not lost. This is Snake Canon. I know 
him all the way through. Where you come from ? ” 


INDIAN BILL COMES BACK 163 


“Camp.” 

“Where’s camp ?” 

“That’s for you to say,” Buddie explained to 
him. “You are a guide; not we.” 

Indian Bill grunted. 

“Where did you put the camp ?” he demanded of 
Mr. MacDougall. 

“At the head of the slope above Wind River rapids, 
ten miles in.” 

“Hm ! Big ways from here, bad trail.” Indian 
Bill paused and pondered. “First, we must make 
litter,” he said, as the result of his ponderings. 
“ Can’t carry man with a broke leg in our arms.” 

Not all of Buddie’s scouting had taught him to 
make a litter in the time that Indian Bill gave to the 
operation, let alone a litter long enough to accommo- 
date a man of Mr. Kent’s dimensions plus his splints. 
Indian Bill accomplished it, however. More than 
that, he showed himself past master of the art of 
moving invalids. The doctor gave a sigh of com- 
plete satisfaction, when Indian Bill, waving him 
aside, lifted the artist like a baby and laid him on the 
bed of springy twigs which lined the litter. 

“Now,” Bill said, as casually as if carrying a full- 
grown man up a rocky trail were a part of the task 
of every normal day ; “now you each take a corner, 
so. And walk this way, so, two-two, not all to- 
gether. Then he won’t shake about so much. 
Now!” And the litter swung gently forward, up- 
ward, on the trail. 

Once at the top of the cliff, Indian Bill kept on 
steadily, for a mile or two along the level ground at 
the summit. Then, all at once, he halted and stared 


164 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


questioningly about him into the pearly mist, now 
darkening fast with coming night. 

“Do you know,” Dr. Angell spoke quite softly to 
his brother; “I am half afraid the old sinner has 
missed the trail, after all.” 

Softly as he spoke, the artist heard him and opened 
his eyes. 

“Don’t worry, old man, even if he has. I’m not 
in any great pain. I could keep on like this, all 
night,” he said. 

In his turn, Buddie heard, and a lump came to 
his throat. This was the man whom, on more than 
one occasion, talking to Tom, he had dubbed a 
coward. But cowards, as a rule, were not created 
of such stuff as this. 

Indian Bill, however, still stood snuffing at the 
air like a hound on scent. Suddenly a change came 
over him, the indecision left his face, his body 
tautened. 

“ I hear dog,” he said. “ Listen ! ” 

Sure enough, across the heavy, fog-laden air around 
them came a bellowing bark, a bark which could 
have had its source in but one pair of brazen canine 
lungs. 

Buddie caught the sound rapturously. 

“It’s Ebenezer ! Hear him ! I’d know his voice 
out of a thousand. Camp must be somewhere 
near.” 

Five minutes later, Indian Bill tottered beneath 
the impact of Ebenezer’s burly, welcoming body, and 
the litter tottered with him. However, Dr. Angell, 
as he afterwards confessed, was far too much relieved, 
to think of any temporary injury to his patient. 


INDIAN BILL COMES BACK 165 


Indian Bill superintended the carrying of the litter 
inside the tent. Then he remarked, the while he 
rubbed his aching arms, — 

“Dog not such an all-fool, after all.” 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


RENTING 

“POME along, Buddie.” 

yj “Can’t.” 

“Oh, come along !” 

“Sha’n’t, if you like that any better.” 

“But we’re ready to start.” 

“Start, then.” 

“Isn’t any fun without you.” And, this time, 
Teresa’s voice struck in, albeit without any desire to 
injure the feelings of Tom who stood waiting at her 
elbow. 

Buddie’s reply was unconcerned. 

“Then don’t go.” 

“But you will come, Buddie ; won’t you ?” 

The pause which followed, was filled with low argu- 
ments, proceeding from the next room whence Bud- 
die’s voice had come. Then Buddie’s accents rolled 
out again, decisive and sonorous. 

“I’m not coming. I’m having a better time here.” 

“Oh, blow!” Tom said comprehensively. Then, 
for Teresa’s benefit, he added, “All off, then. Once 
he gets to Renting, it’s all up with us.” 

And Teresa nodded understandingly. 

The new verb. Renting > and to Kent, had been an evo- 
lution of these latter days. Tom vowed it was the only 
active verb that could describe the present deeds of 


KENTING 


167 


Buddie, whileTeresa, accepting it, made no bones of de- 
claring that her own nose was completely out of joint; 
that, imported to be guide, philosopher, and friend to 
Buddie, in reality, she was dying of his stern neglect. 

Neglected or not by Buddie, however, Teresa was 
plainly flourishing in her new conditions, and Tom 
kept her so well occupied that her occasional demands 
for sympathy fell upon unheeding ears. Buddie 
was not a model of an attentive host, it is true ; but 
Chubbie Neal was doing his fair share to make 
Teresa forget the fact, and Chubbie, taken by him- 
self, was no mean source of entertainment. Even 
without Buddie at her beck and call, Teresa was 
forced to confess to herself and to Mrs. MacDougall 
that never in all her life before had she had so good 
a time. Budge and Toddie had been joined by a 
young brother, as spotty and as gentle as a tabby- 
cat. Chubbie had not only undertaken to teach 
Teresa to ride, but also to paddle, to cast a fly, and 
to play six kinds of patience. Moreover, both of them 
had agreed that, for the present, Buddie’s neglect of 
them was quite excusable. Nobody could do every- 
thing at once, and he was busy, Kenting. 

Being defined in cold and unelastic English, Kent- 
ing appeared to consist in sitting cross-legged on the 
edge of the artist’s bed, the head-end edge, so as not 
to joggle the broken leg in moments of extreme ex- 
citement, and in talking over with him most of the 
events which had occurred since the world began. 
For, although it was now three weeks and more 
since the accident, the artist was still flat on his back, 
with an iron weight attached to the broken leg which 
had been dangerously near to being a broken hip. 


168 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


The trials of that memorable foggy day had by 
no means ended, when the combined efforts of Eben- 
ezer and Indian Bill had brought the litter to the 
temporary camp. The permanent camp was still 
to be gained; and not only was it a good twenty 
miles away, but the trail led down the roughest sort 
of a mountain side and then along a stretch of foam- 
ing, treacherous, rapid-spotted river. 

As a matter of course, nothing could be done, that 
first night, beyond making Mr. Kent as comfortable 
as was possible with the resources of their present 
quarters. That done. Dr. Angell retired to his own 
tent to talk the matter over with his sister. 

“It’s bad, Julia,” he said, at the end of the story. 
“ What’s more, I’m afraid it is going to be a good deal 
worse. Still, we shall have to take it as it comes, for 
Kent can’t be sent East to his friends, and he doesn’t 
seem to care to have any of them come out here. 
You and I have got to put this thing through to- 
gether, once we get him back to camp. I must say, 
I dread the trip for him. He has good grit ; but it 
is going to be tested to the very limit.” 

“Yes.” Aunt Julia spoke crisply. “I can see that. 
Once we do get him home, though ? What then ? ” 

“Make him as comfortable as we can in that 
shack, I suppose.” 

Aunt Julia cast upon her brother a look of absolute 
rebuke. 

“Ernest, are you a dunce; or are you just trying 
to draw me out ?” she asked a little bit impatiently. 
“Of course, if ever we do get the man home alive, 
he’ll be taken straight to our house. We both of us 
can look out for him better there.” 


KENTING 


169 


“What about the nurse ? ” the doctor queried. 

“Nurse ! Nonsense ! By the time you could get 
one out here, you would have ceased to need her. 
We can put this thing through together, as you say.” 

“I only referred to the planning,” her brother 
told her meekly. 

“That is the main part of it all, that and the sur- 
gery. You’ll have to see to the bone, anyway ; there 
isn’t another doctor within seventy miles. The near- 
est one is a specialist in horses. No; this is your 
case. As for the nursing, you haven’t another thing 
to do, and I have any amount of time on my hands. 
Anyway, we will try it, at the start.” 

“If Kent will let us,” the doctor interposed. 

His sister laughed. 

“That just depends on our tact and common sense. 
If he rebels, leave him to me.” 

The doctor sat for a minute or two, staring at the 
trim, intrepid little woman at his side. Then, — 

“Julia, you are a trump !” he said. And then he 
added, “All the same, I’d give a good year of Kent’s 
life, if I had him back at Gray Buttes now.” 

Next morning, he said the same thing again, and 
with even better reason. Kent, after a night of 
total sleeplessness and much pain, had developed a 
high fever. Now and then, towards morning, he had 
even been a bit delirious. In the intervals of quiet, 
though, his courage never once had failed him, nor 
yet his courteous care for his campmates whose rest 
he had so broken. Uncomplaining, his attitude was 
one of half-humorous apology for his unintentional 
misdoing and the consequent inconvenience that he 
had hurled upon the camp. Nevertheless, by morn- 


170 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


ing, Dr. Angell needed no clinical thermometer to 
assure him that he faced a dilemma, and that a grave 
one. Should he risk what might even be his patient’s 
life by attempting the long, hard journey back to 
camp; or should he face the danger of permanent 
crippling, from subjecting the broken leg too long 
to the boggled surgery made needful by his remote- 
ness from anything at all resembling the proper sup- 
plies ? It was Buddie, whose quiet statement of an 
indubitable fact finally induced the doctor to order 
a start for home. 

“Do you know. Daddy,” Buddie had said gravely, 
when, at the first gray dawn. Dr. Angell had flung 
himself down for a moment at his son’s side; “I’ve 
been thinking about this thing, almost all night. 
Mr. Kent isn’t just like everybody. He would care 
more than most people, if this thing should make 
him lame ; he’d almost rather be dead.” 

“Hush, Buddie !” 

But Buddie snuggled to the remonstrant hand upon 
his shoulder. 

“I mean it. Daddy. I know him more than you 
do, even if you are another man. I know how he loves 
to do all his queer tricks; how he likes to know 
that his body will do anything he tells it. And, if 
it shouldn’t — That’s why we every one of us have 
got to take hold of this thing to pull him through. 
Daddy,” and, in his eagerness, Buddie straightened 
up upon his elbow, and delivered his charge directly 
down into his father’s face; “whatever else you’ve 
done in your life, you’ve got to bring that leg out 
all right, no matter what other risks you take.” 

The doctor took the risk accordingly. He be- 


KENTING 


171 


lieved, down in his heart, that Buddie had spoken 
true : the artist would find it harder than most men 
to face life with a stiffened leg. Moreover, Daddy 
was a little superstitious. In his present great un- 
certainty as to the wise thing for him to do, he ac- 
cepted it as an omen that Buddie should speak out 
and show him the way. He took his decision stead- 
ily. The early breakfast over, he ordered the litter 
brought again ; and Kent, now babbling in delirium, 
was lifted from the comfortable camp bed and placed 
upon it, ready for the breakneck journey down the 
trail. 

Afterwards, long afterwards, the doctor wondered 
at the endurance shown by them all, endurance of 
brain and brawn and nerve. Ponies were out of the 
question, save for Chubbie and Teresa who were 
sent forward at full speed, to order all things put in 
readiness for their coming. Aunt Julia stayed, be- 
cause she was a woman and might be needed in some 
crisis; Buddie stayed, because he flatly refused to 
do anything else, stayed in absolute defiance of his 
father who would have chosen to spare his young 
son the memory of the experience. 

“We’ve been the biggest sort of chums,” he argued 
hotly. “I’d be a beast to leave him, now he’s down 
and out.” 

“But he doesn’t need you now,” his father argued 
back again. “In fact, he doesn’t even know you’re 
anywhere about.” 

However, Buddie had the final word. 

“That’s no sign he won’t, any minute,” he re- 
torted. “Anyhow, I stay.” 

And his father, though downed in the contest, yet 


172 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


felt a thrill of pride in the indomitable, sunburned 
urchin who faced him, fists in pockets and cap shock- 
ingly awry. 

By eight o’clock, then, they were up and off. It 
was slow and toilsome work, the picking a level foot- 
ing, sometimes for two men and sometimes for four, 
along the narrow trail up which they had come trot- 
ting so buoyantly, not three full days before. In the 
rude litter, the patient lay and babbled, moaning a 
little now and then, when one or the other of his 
bearers stumbled over a rolling stone in the path. 
He was no light weight in himself; the crude litter 
had been made too hurriedly to allow much plan for 
lightness, and it took all of the strength of the men 
who could be spared from the burden of the camp 
equipment to help the doctor and Mr. MacDougall, 
the topographer and Indian Bill to bear their inert 
load. Buddie had begged to take his turn with the 
others ; but on that point Daddy had held firm. 

And so the sad little cavalcade set out, the litter 
first, with Buddie close beside it, then the extra 
bearers, changing often, then the camp equipment 
with which, in such conditions, it would have been 
madness to lose touch. And the trail, now tested 
carefully in its every inch, seemed to lengthen be- 
fore them and grow rough, a cruel, tricky trail, and 
not at all the one up which their merry group had 
trotted, not two full days ago. 

Early as had been their start, short as had been 
their halt for nooning, dusk found them still far from 
the river and the waiting canoes. The doctor gave 
one final look around him at the darkening forest; 
then he gave the order to halt, gave it curtly and with 


KENTING 


173 


a roughness which was meant to cover the deadly 
fear that swept over him, each time his eyes fell on 
that figure in the litter, not babbling now and rest- 
less, but lying still, with the head drooping slightly 
to one side. 

Indian Bill came out with flying colours, that 
night. It was he who chose an ideal spot for camp- 
ing, he who chopped wood and built the fire and 
helped the Chinaman to cook, he who developed 
a deft and gentle touch that rendered him invaluable 
as a nurse, he who brewed a weedy drink that quieted 
the sufferer while it quenched his raging thirst. 
Questioned and complimented by the doctor, though, 
he merely shrugged his scrawny shoulders. 

“Indian trick,” was all that he vouchsafed to say. 
“We all learn him; everybody die, some time or 
other.” 

That night and the succeeding morning seemed to 
Dr. Angell to surpass anything he had experienced 
before in his professional life. He had been used to 
facing bad emergencies, trained to make the best of 
sudden calls upon his resourcefulness and skill. 
Nevertheless, his years of practise in a city, varied 
as they had been, had never brought him face to 
face with the complicating factors of a serious sur- 
gical case and a slightly dubious heart, coupled with 
a total absence of all things from strychnine to cheese- 
cloth and plaster of paris. Indian Bill’s weedy brew, 
a pocket knife and an adjacent thicket, the frag- 
ments of such clothing as could be spared by the 
members of the party : these were the medical stores 
and the surgical appliances at his command. Small 
wonder that a weary, haggard doctor heaved a great 


174 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


sigh of relief when, long past noon next day, the 
little column came to a halt beside a group of canoes 
drawn up upon the river bank. Indeed, such was 
the doctor’s abject discouragement that he would 
have found it quite in keeping with all the rest of 
the bad matter, had the canoes been missing utterly, 
made off with by the same dire hand of Fate which 
had been the cause of all their past undoing. v 
On the river bank, the doctor wasted no time in 
giving orders. Home was in sight; the men could 
be left to rest and refresh themselves and straggle on 
as best they could. It was only a question of rush- 
ing the invalid on, now, as fast as possible. With a 
swift, measuring glance, he took heedful note of the 
canoes, picked out the longest and the slimmest. 

“In there. Bill,” he said. “It looks the best. 
No ; not the litter. Just Mr. Kent. Careful ! ” 

But the caution had been needless. Tenderly, 
skilfully, strongly, the ragged, unkempt Indian bent 
above the litter, lifted its inert occupant as if he had 
been a baby, and, with the very gesture of a mother 
placing her little baby in a cradle, so he placed the 
long, lean, inert man inside the bark canoe. 

The doctor, white under his sunburn, nodded 
and relaxed the shutting of his teeth. Then his gaze 
swept the faces of the men before him, once, twice. 
In the end, it rested on the young topographer. 

“Hearn,” he said briefly; “you are the best one 
at the paddle. I rather fancy that it’s up to 
you.” 

The topographer whitened in his turn. In his 
turn, too, he shut his teeth. Then, — 

“I’ll do my best, doctor,” he said steadily. “It’s 


RENTING 175 

not going to be too easy ; but, so far as possible, you 
can count on me.” 

Five minutes afterward, two canoes were shooting 
headlong down the rapids, bound for home. In the 
foremost canoe were the topographer and his almost 
lifeless freight. Buddie was with his father in the 
second. 

And, most of the time since then, Buddie had 
been Renting. 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 


EBENEZER OUSTS THE COOK 

‘‘OTOP your worrying, and go and get Teresa,"’ 
Buddie ordered. 

The topographer, as well he might, looked some- 
what astonished. He had come across the road, his 
face full of trouble, to make a sinister report to Mr. 
Brooks MacDougall. Mr. Brooks MacDougall miss- 
ing, gone for a drive with his wife and Dr. Angell, 
he had been moved to make an unauthorized report 
to Buddie who had, quite as usual, been on picket 
duty beside the artist’s bed. The topographer had 
grown to like Teresa Hamilton exceedingly. None 
the less, he could not see why she should be proposed 
as a plaster for his present woe. Therefore, — 

“What can she do about it.^^” he asked. 

“Anything you want, from boiling carrots to mak- 
ing fudge,” Buddie answered, and by his answer he 
disclosed the fact that the crisis, whatever its exact 
nature, in some way or other concerned the kitchen. 

“But she is too pretty,” the topographer made 
somewhat irrelevant objection. 

Buddie’s answer showed his youth. 

“ What if she is ? It doesn’t hurt the flavour any. 
Besides, she doesn’t stir the pudding with her nose.” 

“No; only—” 

“Only what?” Buddie queried relentlessly. 


EBENEZER OUSTS THE COOK 177 

“Only I wouldn’t like to see a girl like that inside 
a kitchen.” - 

Buddie chuckled. 

“From all accounts, I’d a long way rather see 
her inside of ours than out of it.” Then he raised 
his voice, for he had joined the topographer outside 
the door, and their talk had been carried on in the 
lowest tones possible, not to disturb the invalid 
within. “What were you asking, Mr. Kent?” 

“What’s the excitement?” 

“Oh, did we wake you up? I’m so sorry.” 
Buddie’s penitence was manifestly genuine. 

“It’s high time. I’ve had an immense nap. 
Who is out there ? Hearn ? Come along in here, 
you youngsters, and tell me the news of the day.” 

Hearn took the nearest chair. Buddie, as a 
matter of course, coiled himself up on the bed, his 
arm against the artist’s shoulder. Then silence 
fell. Neither one of them quite liked to break the 
news which, to their point of view, seemed totally 
appalling. 

The artist urged them on. Tucked up in bed and 
nursed as never man was nursed before, he knew that 
no especial harm would be allowed to fall on him. 
Therefore, his curiosity was greater than his fear. 

“What is it?” he demanded. 

It was Hearn who answered, and with a bluntness 
that made no effort to break the news with cau- 
tion 

“The cook is drunk,” he said. 

“Oh. Well, what then?” 

“Starvation, I should say,” Hearn replied affably. 
“He never has done it before, so we hadn’t provided 


178 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 

an understudy; and not a soul of us boys knows 
how to cook an ounce of food.” 

Artist though he was, Mr. Kent promptly gave 
proof of his practical mind. 

“Isn’t there anything cold?” he inquired. 

“We looked, first thing. You see, it’s only an 
hour to dinner. We’ve just found him.” 

“We can’t eat him,” Buddie objected, from his 
place at Mr. Kent’s elbow. 

“No; nor too much else. There’s a pair of 
potatoes, and one chop, and a bowl of something 
that looks as much like beans as anything else, only 
we can’t remember having any.” 

“It probably is porridge,” Buddie suggested. 
“ Well, go on. What else ? ” 

“Nothing.” 

“Nothing?” 

“Bread, of course; but that doesn’t count.” 

“Apparently,” Mr. Kent appeared to be address- 
ing the ceiling ; “we shall have to eat the cook.” 

“He’s raw.” 

“No ; from all accounts — What were you saying, 
Buddie?” 

“What I said before : that it’s up to Teresa.” 

“But a child like that can’t cook for a whole 
camp,” Mr. Kent objected, even as Hearn had done 
before him. 

“ Can’t she ! Teresa has got nine brothers, and 
any one of them can eat for ten.” 

“She doesn’t do the family cooking.” 

“She could, if she tried, though.” And Buddie 
swiftly outlined the aims and methods of the play- 
house. “Up to now, of course, it’s mainly been for 


EBENEZER OUSTS THE COOK 179 


fun. Now, though, she’s got her chance to see 
whether she’s able to make good.” 

The topographer shook his head. 

“Hard on her, Buddie. She’s guest here, not 
cook.” 

“Harder on her to see us starve,” Buddie retorted. 
“Just think how she would feel, to see us lying, 
wan and lily-pale, about her feet, begging with our 
last breaths for the grilly mutton chops which she 
alone could give.” 

Mr. Kent laughed at Buddie’s poetical effusion. 
Then once more he attacked the practical issue. 

“Isn’t there another cook in reach, Hearn?” 
he questioned. 

“Not since Wang went off to Denver, Mr. Kent. 
Cooks don’t grow on trees out here, by any means. 
It takes time and bribery to achieve them, I assure 
you. Even then, we sometimes find them missing, 
as in the present instance.” 

“He’s gone, then?” 

“His senses. His body is very present. In fact, 
just now it is underneath the table in the kitchen. 
One of my present problems is how to get it out, 
without sawing either it or the table legs to pieces. 
It is a grand fit.” 

“How long does it last ?” 

“The fit? Till I can pry it apart. I’m going to 
get the rodman to help me; he is a muscular crea- 
ture. Oh, you mean the spree ? How can I tell ? 
I never saw him have one.” 

“Don’t you know how to cook, Buddie?” Mr. 
Kent inquired. 

“Only roast apples and peanut taffy. It doesn’t 


180 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 

run in the family, Mr. Kent,” Buddie assured him 
modestly. 

“What about your aunt?” 

“Aunt Julia!” Buddie’s voice suggested that 
the thought would have led him to hold up his 
hands in horror, had they not been too comfortably 
clasped behind his head. “She cook! She used 
to have to get the maid to warm Pet-Lamb’s milk. 
Pet-Lamb ? She was the cat, a great, fat white 
beast that had to have her milk warmed up and 
sweetened for her. And Aunt Julia didn’t even 
know how to do that. Most women don’t,” Buddie 
added conclusively. 

The artist whistled. The action was very like a 
boy. Indeed, in spite of the whitening out of his 
sunburn and certain new lines around his lips, his 
face was boyish, as he lay there on his back with 
the iron weight always drag, dragging at his injured 
leg. Moreover, despite the ceaseless pain and bore- 
dom of his present predicament, something of the 
indifferent look had been going out of his eyes, in 
those last weeks. Daddy had been the first one of 
them all to note the change. Noting it, he had 
wondered whether any part of it had been caused by 
the constant presence of his son. Buddie, once his 
boyish liking was really aroused, was loyal to a fault 
and sympathetic. However, his sympathy was not 
exactly of the tender and sentimental species. It 
was too healthily exuberant for that. Buddie 
could cuddle; but he could not, would not, coddle. 

Not that Mr. Kent, since his ugly accident, had 
lacked his own fair share of coddling. Aunt Julia 
was a past master of the art; and Teresa could, 


EBENEZER OUSTS THE COOK 181 


when she chose, be a close second. Moreover, in 
the case of Mr. Kent, she did choose. She had 
liked the tall, lank artist from the start, partly from 
his eyes, in part because he treated her with the 
same deference he showed to Aunt Julia, asked her 
opinions and listened when she gave them, talked 
to her, without talking down to her. And then any 
girl, with any spark of womanliness in her, could not 
fail to be impressed with the plucky way in which 
he took his accident, making light of it when he 
could, shutting his teeth and burying his woe in the 
sheet when he could not. Yes, Teresa liked Mr. 
Kent absolutely. Liking him, she bestowed on him, 
despite his greater dimensions, much the same sort 
of treatment she accorded to little Tootles, when the 
ways of the world collided with his young ideals. 
And the artist liked it every bit as well as did the 
little Tootles. 

Meanwhile, — 

“Where is she?” the topographer was asking. 

“Pet-Lamb ? The happy hunting-ground of rats 
and mice. Or did you mean Aunt Julia?” Buddie 
queried lazily. 

“Neither. Teresa.” 

“She and Chub went off, this noon. Fishing, I 
think. Anyhow, they had a lot of tackle of all 
sorts, and didn’t ride.” 

“\^y didn’t you go, too, Buddie?” Mr. Kent 
asked. 

“Because I wanted to hear the rest of the story 
you were telling, yesterday, the one about the artist 
chap in Brussels. You got out of finishing it, yester- 
day, and you went to sleep, to-day. I had been 


182 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


hoping/’ Buddie cast a suggestive glance at Hearn ; 
“that, once you did wake up, you would have a 
chance to finish it, before we were interrupted.” 

Hearn crossed his booted legs. 

“Graceful hint, Buddie! I’m dumb, and the 
dinner can go hang. Go ahead, Mr. Kent.” 

But Buddie interposed. 

“Not. You haven’t heard the first end of it. It 
wouldn’t be polite to tell the last, then, when you 
were present. Besides, in Uncle Brooks’s absence, 
you are in charge of this expedition. It’s up to you 
to see to it that the invalid is fed at the usual time.” 

Then Hearn gave tongue to the real uneasiness that 
possessed his soul. 

“Hang it, Buddie! I can’t cook. I don’t know 
a gridiron from a grater.” 

“Time you learned, then,” Buddie told him cal- 
lously. “Go and find Teresa, and get her to show 
you.” 

“How can I find her, when I don’t know where 
she is?” 

“It wouldn’t be finding, if you did know,” Buddie 
made literal answer. “As for trailing her — ” 

“But I can’t stand in the door of the cookhouse 
and roar Teresa,'' the topographer objected. “It 
wouldn’t be decent; and, besides, she might not 
hear.” 

The artist, prone in the bed, chuckled. 

“Likewise, if she knew what was ahead of her, 
she might not come,” he said. 

Then Buddie stuck up his red head and spoke 
defensively. 

“That’s not Teresa,” he declared. 


EBENEZER OUSTS THE COOK 183 


“What isn’t Teresa ? W^at haven’t I been doing 
now?” Teresa’s voice demanded from outside. 
“May I come in, Mr. Kent?” 

“Always.” 

Teresa appeared in the doorway, her broad hat 
most gloriously askew, her skirts flapping dankly 
around her trim ankles. She waved away the chair 
beside the bed, and took her stand at the far end of 
the room. 

“Mercy, no ! I’d give poor Mr. Kent a cold in 
his head, if I came near him. I’m soaking wet.” 

“So we observe. What happened ?” 

“Chubbie. Next time you send me off alone 
with him, Buddie Angell, you can buy me an accident 
insurance policy, before we start.” 

“What’s the row ?” 

Teresa cast a glance down across her skirt, now 
fringed with hanging drops of muddy water. 

“Thomas has an adventurous nature,” she replied 
demurely. 

“ Get out. You dared me, and said you’d follow,” 
came an irate voice from the room outside. 

“What if I did?” Teresa demanded superbly. 
“I supposed you had some sense.” 

“So I had, sense enough not to take a dare from a 
girl.” There came a thump and then another. 

“Probably taking off his shoes,” Teresa inter- 
preted swiftly. “It’s foolish, too. He can’t pos- 
sibly get them on again, and he’s too big to go 
barefoot.” 

“I’ve got another pair.” The jerky accent 
suggested that Chubbie now was wrestling with 
adhesive stockings. 


184 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“Yes, in your tent.” 

Chubbie’s sigh of relief, plainly audible, betokened 
that the worst was over. 

“Buddie’ll get them,” he said serenely. 

“Not on your life! I’m not your fag; I’m for 
Mr. Kent,” Buddie made prompt retort. “Besides, 
what have you been doing to Teresa ?” 

“She did it. It wasn’t my doing.” 

Prudently Teresa changed the subject. 

“What were you discussing about me, when I came 
in ?” she asked. 

The others sought to temporize. Buddie, how- 
ever, believed in the direct method. 

“Whether you would get the dinner, to-night.” 

“Of course,” Teresa made undaunted reply. 
“What do you want?” 

“Anything you happen to find lying about.” 

“Except the cook,” Mr. Kent suggested prudently. 
“You might find him a bit too large to handle.” 

Regardless now of her wet skirt and the possible 
consequent danger of imparting cold to the invalid, 
Teresa flounced down into the empty chair. 

“Tell me,” she ordered. “I don’t see the joke.” 

“There isn’t any joke,” Buddie responded. “It 
is serious, sober earnest. The cook is on the floor, 
under the kitchen table, sleeping it off ; and you are 
the only solitary soul in ninety miles who can keep 
this camp from starving.” 

Most girls would have quailed at such a prospect. 
Not so Teresa. She drew one long breath of delight. 
Then, — 

“How lovely !” she said comprehensively. 

A moment later, she was on her feet, and starting 


EBENEZER OUSTS THE COOK 185 

off in the direction of the cookhouse. It was Mr. 
Kent who called her back, and sent her to her room 
to change her dripping raiment. He had the 
prudence of his years, the foresight. He realized 
the danger, not only to Teresa, but also to them all, 
if any disaster born of wetting should descend upon 
Teresa Hamilton, sole link between her comrades 
and cooked food. Therefore he spoke promptly 
and with authority, and Teresa obediently scurried 
off in search of dryer raiment. 

Teresa was never one to waste much time in prink- 
ing. She was too trim for that, too deft and too 
efficient. If a girl could dress at all, she argued, she 
could do it as well in fifteen minutes as in fifty. 
Now, though, she made record time. Ten minutes 
later, she was back upon the threshold, spick and 
span and totally unruffled by her haste. 

“Ready,” she announced. “But who is going to 
sit on top of the table, to protect me from the cook 

Hearn was, apparently, for he arose and went away 
at Teresa’s side. Judged from the sounds of hilarity 
which presently emerged from the cookhouse, the 
policy of protection was enjoyable, at least to 
protector and protected. As for the other member 
of the little party, he slumbered on, peaceful and 
unconscious, in his improvised kennel among the 
table legs. 

It was Ebenezer who finally dislodged him, Eben- 
ezer, the always-greedy, whose stomach kept a better 
record of the hours than any ship’s chronometer. 
Ebenezer had been reposing in the shade, under the 
window of the room where his master was chattering 
with Mr. Kent. At length, Ebenezer’s inner man 


186 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


stirred drowsily within him, drove off the dreams 
and, wide awake, announced his hunger. A minute 
later, Ebenezer was ambling along in the direction 
of the cookhouse. 

For a mere canine, Ebenezer’s logic was singu- 
larly trustworthy. Dinners were, nowadays, the 
main feature of his universe; dinners, moreover, 
nowadays were often served before the family meal, 
not after. Else, how could the cook conceal his 
errors and keep up his reputation ? And Ebenezer’s 
tastes were catholic, not critical. Quantity was his 
ideal, and quality go hang. Therefore, Ebenezer 
sought the cookhouse with an alacrity which turned 
his ambling into a waddling run. 

To his surprise, he found a new order of things in 
the cookhouse. Mounted guard above the good- 
smelling things upon the stove was Teresa, Teresa 
whom aforetime he had learned to associate with 
discipline, and with a niggardly trick of putting the 
leavings away upon the pantry shelf, Teresa who 
now looked at him with stoic disregard and went on 
stirring things that gave forth luscious odours. That 
was bad enough; but worse awaited Ebenezer. 
Teresa’s disregard was as nothing compared to that 
which met him from his quondam friend, the cook, 
source of bounties beyond Ebenezer’s power to 
reckon. Instead of setting down toothsome jorums 
underneath the table, the cook himself was under- 
neath the table, curled up like a badly-managed 
sausage, and deaf to the pathetic whimperings with 
which Ebenezer sought to communicate the full 
extent of the hunger gnawing at his vitals. Ebenezer 
sat down to consider the situation. 


EBENEZER OUSTS THE COOK 187 


And, above the red-hot stove, Teresa and her 
topographer went on with their stirring, heedless 
of the effect of any luscious odours upon the nerve 
centres of the hungry Ebenezer. 

Ebenezer considered, cocking his wise gray head 
from right to left and back again, whimpering 
suggestively, the while. Then he let himself down 
beside the disregarding cook, and fell to prodding 
him gently with one shaggy paw. The cook still 
disregarded him ; indeed, his sole response to 
Ebenezer’s pleading was to curl himself into a still 
tighter knot. The continued disregard did not 
please Ebenezer. He showed his displeasure by 
throwing himself back a little, and letting off a 
bark that set the pots and pans to throbbing in their 
places. 

However, the good-smelling concoction on the 
stove was near to burning, and, — 

“Hush, Ebenezer!’’ was all Teresa said. 

Ebenezer obediently hushed, and gave another 
instant to consideration. The result of hismusings 
seemed to be that, mannerly methods failing, it 
was time that he should take force. For one long 
minute and for two, he industriously prodded the 
slumbering cook, first with one paw, then the other, 
then with both. Even that failed to arouse the 
source of supplies to do its tri-daily duty, and Eb- 
enezer took his final step. 

He rose to his feet, backed off a pace or two to 
examine the geography of the mingled cook and 
table. Then he came forward daintily, daintily shut 
his jaws upon one of the jutting angles of the cook’s 
anatomy, and settled slowly, slowly backwards. 


188 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


The legs of the table were strong, the sinews of the 
cook were even stronger; but strongest of all were 
the jaws of Ebenezer. With the deliberate, resist- 
less pulling of a surgeon-dentist on a double tooth, 
Ebenezer extracted the slumbering cook from among 
the table legs, dragged him, no longer slumbering, 
across the cookhouse floor, and deposited him in 
an untidy bundle at Teresa’s feet beside the stove. 
That done, he relaxed his hold, backed off to a posi- 
tion midway between the stove and table, and de- 
manded food with joyous certainty that it would be 
forthcoming. 

Ebenezer’s logic justified itself. Food was forth- 
coming promptly and in great abundance. While 
he ate it, the topographer escorted the cook, now 
well awakened, to the nearest spring, and finished up 
the work begun by Ebenezer. Moreover, taking 
pattern from Ebenezer, he finished it with such force 
and thoroughness that it was the cook himself, and 
not Teresa, who prepared next morning’s breakfast 
for the camp. 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 


TERESA AND TOM 

“ "rSN’T it funny,” Teresa said to Buddie, that 

-L same night while they were washing up the 
last of the dishes; “how little common sense some 
people have?” 

“As to who?” And Buddie polished a cup with 
a deftness born of many an hour inside Teresa’s 
playhouse. 

“Mr. Hearn, this time.” 

“Hearn is a good sort,” Buddie remarked tem- 
perately. 

Teresa suddenly departed from her thoughtful 
mood and sniffed. 

“Yes; but he doesn’t understand us,” she said. 

“Us?” 

“You and me.” 

Buddie was masculine. Therefore, — 

“Didn’t suppose there was anything to under- 
stand,” he said. 

“There isn’t. That’s the point. That is the very 
thing they don’t understand. Just as if I hadn’t 
the sense to see how things are, and not care.” 

“What things?” Buddie asked obtusely. 

“Mr. Kent, and the way you don’t have all the 
time to frisk around with me.” 

Buddie set down his second cup with a whack, 


190 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


and, the dish-towel in his hand, turned around to 
face Teresa. 

“Do you honestly care, Teresa? I hadn’t 
thought — ” 

“In other words, you knew too much about me,” 
Teresa cut in. “That’s the nicest part of you, 
Buddie. You know enough to take a few things 
for granted.” 

“But, for a fact, have you been lonesome?” 
Buddie queried penitently. “Of course, I know you 
came out here just to make more fun for me, and I 
never thought that perhaps you wouldn’t under- 
stand — ” Buddie, wallowing in a heavy sea of ex- 
planation, suddenly flung up his arms and dived to 
the bottom. “Why, I supposed of course you knew 
I’d rather be out with you than anybody else ; only 
Mr. Kent — ” 

Once more Teresa cut in, and heartily. 

“Of course,” she assented. “Besides, you would 
be a little beast, if you didn’t.” 

Buddie’s face cleared suddenly. 

“Anyway, it isn’t going to last much longer, and 
we’ve got all the rest of the summer ahead of 
us.” 

Teresa gave a final polish to her emptied dish- 
pan; then she washed her hands as daintily as if 
she never had been in contact with anything more 
rudely practical than a pair of sugar-tongs. 

“All the rest of the summer!” she echoed. 
“Buddie, do you realize that we are a third of the 
way through August ? ” 

“No.” Buddie looked a trifle blank. “I hadn’t 
thought much about the time, one way or the other. 


TERESA AND TOM 191 

Out here, it doesn’t seem to make much difference 
what day of the month it is.” 

‘Tt does to me, though.” Teresa sighed a little. 
‘Tt would to you, Buddie, if you had nine brothers 
at home.” 

“I’ve got Ebenezer,” Buddie responded. 

“Yes; but you can hang him up in a corner now 
and then. I can’t hang up little Tootles.” 

“And yet, you’d miss him ?” Buddie’s accent was 
full of thoughtful question. 

“Bud — die!” This time, Teresa sounded 
shocked. “What an awful idea! Miss him!” 
And then she added, “Let’s get Ebenezer and come 
outside. I want a walk, and he needs one. Be- 
sides, we need to show to the world at large that we 
haven’t had a quarrel, or stopped being chums.” 

“What twaddle! As if we could! Hi, Eb- 
enezer ! Come along.” And the two chums van- 
ished around the corner of the cookhouse, talking 
busily as they went. 

Buddie and Teresa had been telling the exact 
and literal truth. They both were perfectly aware 
that Teresa had been asked out to camp, that sum- 
mer, because she and Buddie had been such splen- 
did chums. Moreover, they were well aware that 
their chumship had not suffered in the least because 
Buddie had spent hours on hours in what Tom had 
dubbed Renting, and because Tom had been left, 
meanwhile, to provide the greater part of Teresa’s 
entertainment. In the intervals of Renting and 
of Tom’s social ministrations, there had been hours 
and hours that Buddie and Teresa had spent to- 
gether, talking about the past and future while they 


192 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


lived the present, making enough of the time they 
could be together more than to make up for the 
hours when they went their separate ways. It 
was a good deal as Buddie phrased it now, — 

“What’s the sense of kicking up a special rumpus, 
Teresa? We each know that the other is the best 
fellow going; but there’s no need of lifting up our 
voices to proclaim a perfectly evident fact.” 

To be sure, Tom, in these latter days, was inflat- 
ing himself with a smug consciousness that he was 
first-best in Teresa’s estimation. It was he who, 
as a rule, walked abroad at Teresa’s side and pro- 
tected her from Indian Bill, who, once more much in 
evidence, filled with a mortal fear even her intrepid 
soul. It was Tom who rode with her on her pony, 
and took her for long jaunts up and down the canon 
and into the hills beyond. He found Teresa the 
jolliest sort of a companion possible, as alert and 
daring as a boy, and infinitely better than any boy 
by reason of her variable moods which kept him 
busy wondering what she next would say and do. 
Most of the girls whom Tom had known would turn 
panicky, or self-conscious, or, still worse, get on their 
nerves over imagined slights to their dignity. Teresa 
balked at nothing, had no perceptible nerves, and 
took the world in as downright a fashion as any of 
the boys whom Tom had known in school. Added 
to this, moreover, was the little elusive charm born 
of her girlhood, a hint of gentleness and of compre- 
hension which added tenfold to Tom’s enjoyment of 
her comradeship. 

Tom never forgot the first day he had been fully 
conscious of that charm. Up to that time^ he had 


TERESA AND TOM 193 

taken it unthinkingly and as it came. That day, he 
found out just what it could count to him. 

It had been one of his homesick days. They came 
quite regularly, and always on the nineteenth of the 
month — for it was not yet the full year since his 
mother had gone away from him, and he still reck- 
oned up the time by months. He never said much 
about the days, when they came around. His father 
had not encouraged too much talking about the 
past; and Tom was a boy to take a hint of that 
kind without needing repetition. He merely went 
his own way for a few hours, talked little, walked 
heavily and, for the time being, parted with his 
sense of humour utterly. One such day had been 
forestalled by a totally contented evening with 
Aunt Julia and a pack of cards. Another of the same 
sort had been at hand, when Teresa had suggested 
a morning’s fishing, up the canon. 

Directly she suggested it, the plan appealed to 
Tom. One need not talk too much, when one was 
fishing. One could draggle one’s line about, and sit 
silent, and think about the things which rendered 
one a bore, if they were mentioned. Therefore he 
assented eagerly to Teresa’s plan, and went trudg- 
ing away beside her, immediately after breakfast. 
Their own particular pool once reached, however, 
Tom sat himself down, apparently to lose himself 
in contemplation of his line, while Teresa, never 
very dense, sat down beside him and, abandoning 
her line to its own devices, fell to studying his face. 

It was a good face, as she well knew, and a strong 
one. Chubbie was not a beauty ; he had shot up, 
all of a sudden, into a long, lanky stripling who 


194 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


appeared to be chiefly composed of wrists and feet. 
But his frame was well-knit ; his features, once they 
filled out a little, would be good. His eyes were 
steady, and his lips were thin. To-day, though, 
the eyes were overcast, and the lips were drooping 
at their corners. Moreover, as Teresa took swift 
note, two fish and then a third one came to nibble at 
his line without causing the slightest answering 
tension on the part of Chubbie’s fingers. 

For some time, she watched him furtively, study- 
ing his face, comparing it with that of Buddie which, 
as a rule, was serenity itself. Buddie’s objections 
to the processes of Fate rarely descended to the level 
of dumb depression. Rather, they were cyclonic 
in their methods of expression. Even in the months 
of his separation from his father, his occasional gusts 
of misery had been divided by long stretches of a 
pure enjoyment of the good things of life which still 
remained to him. 

But Tom was different. He had his hours of 
exuberance; but there were other hours, bad ones 
and long, when it seemed to Teresa that only the 
inherent dumbness of boyhood kept him from call- 
ing out for sympathy. And yet, strangely enough, 
she had never asked questions about him or his 
family. Teresa, as a general thing, was not a gossip ; 
least of all now, when there were too many interest- 
ing things about to leave her leisure to talk about 
mere people. 

Now, all at once, watching Tom, she realized that 
she was, not curious, but intensely interested, to 
know the secret of his drooping lips and heavy eyes. 
In the experience of Teresa Hamilton, an experience 


TERESA AND TOM 


195 


culled from observation of her many brothers, boyish 
depression arose from one source only : parental 
discipline for misdeeds whieh had not been quite 
worth the while, in view of what came after. Sandy, 
putting angleworms in the bed of his serious-minded 
older brother, had looked liked that, the morning 
after ; but there had been cause, physical, as well as 
moral, for Sandy’s wave of pessimism. And no such 
cause had appeared above Tom’s horizon, since the 
night of her arrival. Of so much, Teresa was con- 
vinced. Therefore, she watched her new friend all 
the more intently. 

At length, however, being Teresa and used to 
boys, she spoke. 

“Chubbie, what’s gone wrong ?” 

“Nothing much.” 

“You look worried.” 

“I’m not — specially.” 

The dash betrayed him to the mercies of Teresa, 
for it gave her space to drive home an entering wedge 
of downright fact. 

“I don’t believe it, Chubbie Neal. You look 
exactly, if only you were a girl and could, as if you’d 
like to go off by yourself and have a good cry.” 

“Hh! That’s all you know,” Tom grunted a 
little bit disdainfully. However, the next minute, 
he rubbed his cuff across one eye. “That beastly 
dazzle on the water makes me wink,” he explained 
curtly then. 

Teresa was remorseless. She hauled in her line, 
left it lying in a tangle, moved across to Chubbie’s 
side and shut her fingers on his wrist. 

“What’s the use of fibbing, Chubbie she 


196 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


demanded, as she turned up the cuff for his inspec- 
tion. “Besides, I don’t tell tales.” 

“No; but you think things,” Chubbie said, with 
the temper of a beast at bay. 

“I do not.” 

“Girls always do.” 

“And, if I do, I forget them. Chubbie, what’s 
gone wrong?” 

Chubbie struggled hard to reassert his manliness. 

“A fellow is bound to get down on his luck, once in 
a while. Then he worries,” he explained a little loftily. 

Teresa had the surpassing sense to allow the 
pause to lengthen. When at last she spoke, she 
wasted no energy in extra phrases. 

“I wish I could help,” she said. 

Chubbie eyed her for a moment, quite undecided 
whether to accept her wordless pity, or to turn and 
rend her for her officiousness in her imagining that 
she, a girl, could administer any aid to him, a boy. 
Then, — 

“You can’t,” he said; but his voice was by no means 
as forbidding as he had meant that it should be. 

“Why not?” 

“Nobody can. It just is, and can’t be helped; 
that’s all.” Chubbie shut his fists, rod and all, 
and rested his chin upon them. 

Teresa copied the physical attitude, though not 
the mental one. 

“That’s nonsense,” she said flatly. 

And Chubbie answered just as flatly, — 

“Oh, shut up !” 

Temporarily Teresa obeyed him. She knew her 
man, knew the symptoms of a fit of talkativeness 


TERESA AND TOM 


197 


when all the worries would be cast at her feet. 
Therefore she waited, outwardly meek, inwardly a 
good deal amused by Chubbie’s causeless testiness. 

The long time, though, before Chubbie spoke 
again betokened to her mind that there might be 
more cause for testiness than she knew. She had 
expected to unearth some boyish disagreement with 
the people around him, some worrying detail that 
could be explained away immediately. Instead, 
she found that she was really face to face with 
trouble. 

“What would you do, I’d like to know, if you 
didn’t have your mother?” Chubbie flung the 
question at her, in the end, with a swift force that 
fairly took away her breath. 

Teresa’s mind rapidly went homewards, rapidly 
came back again to the boy beside her. 

“Just die,” she said tersely. 

“No; you wouldn’t. People don’t. They have 
to stand it.” 

“It must be awful. But I didn’t know — ” 
Teresa was beginning. 

Tom nodded slowly, his eyes now on the black 
stripe barring the sleeve of his gray coat. 

“It’s not a year yet, quite. And I don’t get used 
to the feeling that I don’t belong.” 

“But your father? You’ve got him?” 

“Yes. He never talks, though, or wants me to. 
That’s why he put me into school.” 

“ He will talk, by and by. He is trying to get used 
to it, himself, I suppose,” Teresa made charitable 
suggestion. 

Tom shook his head. 


198 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“No; I heard him telling somebody that all he 
wanted was to forget. I don’t see why. But he 
has gone at his business harder than ever, as if 
he really meant what he said.” 

“Haven’t you any brothers?” Teresa asked, 
suddenly aware how little she really knew about 
this summer comrade. 

“No; nor sisters. I am the only one.” 

“How queer !” Teresa meditated aloud, from out 
of her own experience of life, “I supposed every- 
body had some.” 

“Buddie,” Tom suggested. 

“That’s different. His mother died, when he 
was a little tiny baby. But everybody else I know, 
has some. I have nine, myself ; we’re like peas in a 
pod at home. Generally it’s nice; but sometimes 
it really is awful.” Teresa trailed away into memo- 
ries of her own rambustious family circle. Then she 
jerked herself back again to make a fresh suggestion. 
“There’s your Uncle Brooks,” she said. 

“Yes; but he’s a good deal more Buddie’s Aunt 
Julia,” Tom said shrewdly. “Besides, I’ve never 
seen much of him, anyhow. I honestly feel more 
related to her than I do to him.” 

“Don’t we all?” Teresa queried. “I think we 
every one of us count her as our favourite aunt. I 
adored her, long before Buddie knew very much 
about her, and I never shall forgive your uncle for 
taking her away from next door to us. I used, just 
at first, to wish that Ebenezer hadn’t captured him, 
that night.” Teresa paused to laugh at the absurd 
old story. “Still, I suppose it was only a matter of 
time,” she added resignedly. Then once more she 


199 


TERESA AND TOM 

faced Tom, this time with a statement, not a question. 
“Tom, you’re lonesome.” 

“Yes.” 

“And missing your mother more than usual?” 

“She died, the nineteenth,” the boy said, quite 
low. 

“Yes. And it keeps coming back, I suppose. In 
time, it may not be quite so bad; but it isn’t very 
long yet,” Teresa made grave comment. “Still, 
Chubbie, isn’t it better to be out here?” 

“Ye-es. There are more of you, in a way. And 
yet, I don’t quite seem a part of it.” 

“Why not?” 

“Anyhow, not in the same way Buddie is,” Tom 
added, as if in explanation. “No; I’m not jealous, 
Teresa. Buddie is all right; he gets on with all 
sorts of people, and they all like him, whether he 
wants them to, or not. I’m — different.” The 
final word came heavily. 

Teresa shook her head. 

“Not if you didn’t want to be,” she said a little 
mercilessly, for it seemed to her that the boy beside 
her was in need of rousing, even by a flick of the 
spur, if need be. 

Tom took the spurring like the thoroughbred he 
was. 

“I hope that isn’t quite fair, Teresa,” he said. 
“Still, maybe it is. But I honestly don’t mean to 
have it so. Buddie gets on with everybody. He 
hasn’t any idea how many people like him ; he hasn’t 
any idea how much it counts, must count, to be 
popular. He just takes it as it comes, and thinks 
no more about it than you think about the water 


m BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 

when it runs down hill.” And he pointed to the 
stream before them. 

“No,” Teresa assented. “No; he doesn’t.” 

“But the stone knows it, when the water washes 
by and leaves it,” Chubbie added gloomily. 

And then Teresa arose and smote him. 

“Chubbie, you are a dunce, and you’re talking as 
if you were trying to fish for compliments. Stone ! 
You’re a trout, swimming alone, heels up.” Teresa 
was too much in earnest to heed her metaphors. 
“Of course, you have your bad days; we all get 

them, and yours happen to be really bad ones, a 
little worse than most. Chubbie, I am more sorry 
for you than I know how to say. It must be awful 
for you not to have any particular family. And 
yet,” Teresa’s colour came, and she fell to plaiting 
her skirt with fingers that shook a very little. Then 
she looked up into Tom’s face, and went on bravely, 
“And yet, do you really think it’s any reason you 
should talk like a blighted being, with no good times 
at all ? If you talk it, next thing you know, you will 
be believing it; and, next thing, you’ll let yourself 
be it. It’s no use arguing with you and telling you 
how lots of people care about you. That’s not the 
point. The thing I mean is just this : because you’ve 
got one bad, bad thing to face, don’t hold it so near 
your eyes that it shuts out all the other, nicer 
things. Sure as you do it, you’ll be sorry.” And 

then, aware that girlish tongues were not created just 
for lectures, she pulled herself up short, and stuck her 
hand out for forgiveness. “Don’t think I am a 
beast, Chubbie,” she implored him; “or that I 
don’t feel sorry. It’s only that I hate to see you 


TERESA AND TOM 


m 


losing your grip on the best of things, every now and 
then — for, of course, I Ve known something was 
wrong. And,’’ her colour heightened; “next time 
you are feeling lonesome, just remember that an 
adopted cousin is better than nothing, and come 
and talk it out with her. Will you, Chubbie ?” 

And Chubbie’s fist, shutting upon her hand, bore 
witness of the way he took the invitation. 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 


THE LAW OF THE HUNT 


FTER that, of course, there had been signs of 



an alliance between Teresa and Chubbie. 
Chubbie came to Teresa’s defence when Buddie, as 
it seemed to his more literal mind, teased her too 
mercilessly. Teresa sought out Chubbie and coaxed 
him either into the general group, or off into the open 
for hard exercise, whenever one of his heavy moods 
lay on him. Nevertheless, as she had said to 
Buddie, neither the alliance, nor the fact that Mr. 
Kent’s accident had made him an absorbing feature 
of Buddie’s daylight hours, had in any way modified 
the relation between Buddie and Teresa. They, 
each of them, were easily first best in the plans and 
interests of each other. The fact that circumstances 
modified the way this priority must show itself had 
no significance to them. Sometimes the strictest 
test of friendship comes with allowing one’s self to 
be temporarily set aside. 

Together, then, Chubbie and Teresa ranged the 
trails and fished the streams, while Buddie spent long 
hours, sitting cross-legged beside the artist and 
gossiping with him concerning all things from 
circuses to the night that Ebenezer trapped the 
Bishop, and from Daddy’s illness to boy scouts. 
As a rule and preferably, Buddie sat on the edge of 


THE LAW OF THE HUNT 


203 


the bed-head, keeping as still as lay within boy 
nature. Now and then, his enthusiasm overcame 
him, until he smote Mr. Kent’s ear with his knee, 
or, worse, until the bed joggled dangerously beneath 
him. However, the distance was so long from the 
head of the artist to his heels that the joggling mainly 
died away before it reached the afflicted end of his 
anatomy. Besides, the mere presence of Buddie 
and his chatter would have atoned for much joggling, 
so long as the joggling did not impair the final 
success of Dr. AngeU’s surgery. 

Day by day, nowadays, Dr. Angell was becoming 
increasingly content with the results of his skill. 
His had been no mean achievement, indeed. The 
fracture, taken at its best, had been a bad one, a 
very bad one. And it had been complicated by 
conditions that would have developed blood poison- 
ing in nine people out of ten. Fortunately, Mr. 
Kent proved to be the tenth one. There had been 
three or four days, after reaching camp, when first 
the saving of his life, and then the saving of his leg, 
had trembled in the balance. Then he had pulled 
through the worst of the danger, less by the skill of 
any surgeon. Dr. Angell always protested, than by 
the force of his own indomitable pluck, and by the 
saving grace stored up from five decades of cleanly 
living. For it is in times like those that one reaps 
the harvest of his self-control. Certain habits of 
living and thinking, laid down for David Kent during 
his days at Lawrenceville, adopted unthinkingly 
and for all time, certain ideals regarding the decent 
thing to do: these were the things that sent him 
out from his accident upon two legs instead of one. 


204 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 

Moreover, as the weeks went by, long weeks and 
very boring, if not exactly dreary. Dr. Angell was 
promising to himself with more and more assurance 
that the two legs would one day be just as lithe and 
strong as ever. 

Meanwhile, though, Mr. David Kent, artist and 
gymnast, still lay flat on his back in the MacDougalls’ 
extra bedroom whither, by Mrs. MacDougall’s 
orders, he had been brought and deposited, more 
dead than alive. And Buddie, for the most part, 
coiled himself up beside him and talked to his heart’s 
content. 

Teresa finally intervened, not out of jealousy, 
be it understood, but prompted by her elders who 
began to think that Buddie was spending far too 
little time afield for his own good. They approved 
of Buddie’s devotion; but, after all, Mr. Kent was 
an outsider, an annex to their party, and Buddie had 
come West, that summer, in order to get the good of 
the out-door life, not to play nurse to any man, 
however healthy-minded and however appreciative 
of Buddie’s attentions. 

Teresa, who had some common sense, listened to 
the explanations of her elders and nodded under- 
standingly. Then she put a question. 

“But won’t Buddie think it is because I am getting 
jealous of Mr. Kent?” she asked. 

Mrs. MacDougall smiled. 

“Teresa dear, aren’t you broad enough not to 
care, if he does ? ” she asked. 

“I’m not; but I suppose I ought to be,” the girl 
said honestly. 

Aunt Julia smiled again. 


THE LAW OP THE IHJNT 205 

‘T rather think you are,” she said, and then she 
changed the subject. 

“Buddie,” Teresa said to him, that night; “I 
want a good, old-fashioned day with you. It is 
ages since weVe had one.” 

Buddie nodded. 

“Right, oh. When?” 

“To-morrow ?” 

“Can’t.” 

“Why not?” 

“ Going to do a lot of other things.” 

“For Mr. Kent?” 

“With him,” Buddie corrected her. 

Teresa liked the correction, though she forebore 
to say so. 

“Why can’t Chubbie do them?” 

“Chubbie’s no good. He doesn’t know the kind 
of things, either,” Buddie said loftily. 

“Have you ever tried him?” 

“No use. Chub is a good sort; but he doesn’t 
know Mr. Kent well enough.” 

“He likes him, though.” 

“I suppose.” Buddie’s accent was indifferent. 

“And, if you like people, you can generally get 
on with them,” she argued. 

“Oh, yes, get on,” Buddie echoed disparagingly. 

“Well, what more do you want?” Teresa was 
human, and so it was no wonder that her voice 
betrayed impatience. 

And Buddie added the finishing touch to her 
impatience by his nonchalant reply. 

“Oh, I d’ know,” he said. 

However, remembering Aunt Julia’s smile, Teresa 


206 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


knotted up the ravelling ends of her patience, and 
began again. 

“Buddie,” she said cajolingly; “I know how you 
adore Mr. Kent — ” 

Buddie faced her testily, for her choice of word 
had stung his boyish dignity. 

“I do not adore him.” 

Teresa’s dimples came. She turned her head away, 
but she rolled her eyes back towards Buddie. 

“Well — er — like him,” she corrected herself 
with caustic emphasis upon the verb. “And I like 
Chub. He is a good boy, and he,” again the accent ; 
“hasn’t a bad temper. But truly, Buddie, it was 
you I came to play with; you owe me a day now 
and then. Moreover, what is more, I’m going to 
have my day, to-morrow.” And, before Buddie 
could guess her intention and prevent it, she had 
turned on her heel and marched into the artist’s 
presence, thereby putting a very final end to the 
discussion. 

All the rest of the evening, Teresa kept out of 
Buddie’s way. That is, with the most scrupulous 
care, she avoided being left alone with him, avoided 
the same side of any group. Next morning early, 
while they were still at breakfast, Hearn, who had 
finished earlier, came back into the room. 

“Indian Bill is out here, asking for you,” he told 
Teresa. 

She nodded as unconcernedly as if Hearn were 
not inside the secret. 

“All right. We’ll be out, in a minute. How soon 
will you be ready, Buddie 

“ Me ? ” Buddie looked up. “ For what ? ” 


THE LAW OF THE HUNT m 

‘‘Our ride. Bill is waiting.” Teresa maintained 
her air of total unconcern. 

“But I’m not — ” Buddie blustered. 

Teresa turned upon him airily. 

“Oh, yes, you are. It was all arranged, last night.” 
Then she turned back to the doctor. “And you said 
you’d ride out to meet us, and bring some lunch 

In the end, as a matter of course, Buddie yielded, 
yielded with a sheep-to-the-shambles expression which 
taxed to the uttermost Teresa’s sense of fun. She kept 
her countenance well, however, until Indian Bill had 
led up the ponies, they were mounted and Buddie 
already jogging down the trail. Then, for a minute, 
she yielded to the sheer iniquity that was possessing 
her. She turned to wave her hand at the group 
standing by the door; then, with the gesture of a 
saucy child of six, not of a budding woman of sixteen, 
she turned back to Buddie and waved at his dis- 
appearing, disapproving back a long, elastic scarlet 
tongue. That done, she gathered up her reins and 
went jogging off demurely after him. 

Noon and Daddy overtook them simultaneously, 
overtook them in the midst of a hot discussion. 
Buddie, his indifference vanished utterly, was argu- 
ing, heart and soul, to maintain his ground; and 
Daddy, from the dozen words that came to him 
while he was still invisible around an angle of the 
trail, judged that it would be well to dismount and, 
lingering in the offing, leave his young son to fight 
his battle to a finish. Buddie’s weapons might not 
be the sharpest, his methods of using them might not 
be absolutely scientific ; but Daddy approved to the 
full the ground that Buddie was fighting to maintain. 


208 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


The fight had started, half an hour earlier, in a 
grunt from Indian Bill, a grunt so full of derisive 
scorn that Buddie’s dignity forbade him to overlook 
it. At Indian Bill’s suggestion and with the full 
sanction of Teresa, Buddie had brought along his 
gun, not because their expedition was primarily for 
hunting, but because it was Indian Bill’s policy to 
be ready for any sport that offered and at any time. 
As for Teresa, had she not worked, heart and soul, 
for the fund which had provided Buddie’s cadet-like 
corps of scouts with rifles? Who was she, then, to 
cavil at the presence of a gun in any out-door party ? 

None the less, though, Teresa had her own fixed 
notions as to the proper objects for a gun, notions 
shared to the full by Buddie, even though he was a 
boy. And so, when they had dropped from their 
ponies, in obedience to a sign from Indian Bill, had 
tied them, and had gone creeping up a side trail on 
the points of their toes ; and when, rounding an angle 
of the trail, they had come on a fat little brown bear 
standing full in their pathway; and when Buddie 
had lowered his rifle and knocked aside Bill’s gun, 
Teresa gave to him her unqualified support. Indian 
Bill, though, took it much amiss, and vented his 
scorn of Buddie, his anger at him, in no measured 
terms, while the pudgy bear, taking advantage of 
the argument, went crashing through the under- 
brush in search of safety. Hence the fight. 

“I wasn’t going to shoot the little beggar,” Bud- 
die protested amicably, at the start. 

“You won’t get another chance like that,” Indian 
Bill retorted sullenly. 

“Maybe not. Anyhow, I’m glad I let him go. 


209 


THE LAW OF THE HUNT 

He was nothing but a fat puppy. You might as 
well shoot Ebenezer.” 

Indian Bill’s grunt became a veritable snort. 
Out of the sound there came plainly the words, “real 
hunters,” and it also was plain that the words were 
not intended to refer to Buddie. 

Buddie took fire immediately. 

“That’s not hunting: walk into a cub like that, 
head on, and pepper him while he stands and smirks 
at you.” 

“Might tried one shot,” Indian Bill suggested 
sulkily. 

“One shot be hanged ! Even if I had wanted to 
get him, this rifle wouldn’t have been any more use 
than a sling-shot.” 

“Didn’t try,” Indian Bill retorted. 

“What’s the use? I couldn’t have killed him 
with this, I tell you ; and I wouldn’t be brute enough 
to send the little chap off with a bullet inside him, 
for all time. That’s not sport ; it’s just plain beast- 
liness.” 

“Maybe couldn’t have hit,” Indian Bill remarked 
at no one in particular. “Not such good shot, 
anyhow.” 

Buddie’s eyes snapped. The bear had been as 
large as Ebenezer, had been not twenty feet away. 
Buddie suppressed an ardent longing to convert his 
rifle into a cudgel for the assault of Indian Bill, and 
pointed to a dead branch, an hundred feet and more 
down the trail. 

“See that?” he queried curtly; and, an instant 
afterwards, the branch fell to the ground, clipped 
off as neatly as if by a woodsman’s hatchet. Then 


210 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


Buddie added, “Hit a bear at twenty feet ! 
Rather !” 

“Maybe ’fraid,” Indian Bill suggested. “Mr. 
Bear very cross, when hit.” 

And then it was that Buddie either forgot, or wan- 
tonly forsook, his manners. 

“Shut your mouth, you idiot!” he said; and, to 
Teresa’s shame, be it recorded that she rejoiced in 
his saying. 

By this time, the battle was well on, and the in- 
terchange of volleys became hot and heavy. Indian 
Bill led the attack, though, with a certain monotony, 
harping insistently upon either inefficiency or cow- 
ardice as the cause of Buddie’s remarkable fiasco. 
Buddie, on the other hand, alternately parried the 
attacks and delivered counter attacks concerning 
butchers, while Teresa applauded him as a matter of 
course, not alone because of what he said, but also 
because it was he who said it. 

And then, all at once, Buddie shifted his ground 
unexpectedly. 

“And, after all, what’s the use ?” he demanded. 

“Good shot. Everybody likes to shoot bear,” 
Indian Bill responded promptly. 

“ Yes, I know. But why ?'* 

“Grub meat.” 

Buddie made a gesture of disgust. 

“Tough and stringy. Besides, Uncle Brooks has 
stuff enough on hand.” 

Indian Bill shrugged his shoulders. 

“Bear meat better than lamb meat,” he insisted. 
“Tastes more ; takes heap longer to chew up.” 

In spite of himself, Buddie laughed. 


THE LAW OF THE HUNT 211 

“You’ve got me there, Bill, for it’s the truth. I 
can’t say I prefer bear steaks, though.” 

“Mr. Bear might bite somebody,” Indian Bill 
added, as a final argument. “Got him dead, then 
he can’t bite. Everybody quite safe.” 

“Fudge!” Buddie told him. “That cub was no 
more dangerous than Ebenezer. Hunting is all 
right, and good sport enough when there is any sense 
in it. But killing things, just to get as many of 
them dead as we can : that goes on my stomach. 
It’s nothing in the world but murder; it’s not half 
so decent as being a real butcher, even. And there’s 
one thing meaner than that, meaner than killing 
things for the mere fun of seeing them pitch forward, 
dead. That’s the leaving them alive, but hurt so 
that they can’t spend a comfortable hour, or make 
a decent living. That’s — ’’Buddie paused to ran- 
sack his vocabulary for a word suflSciently venomous. 

“But, Buddie, they don’t do that,” Teresa in- 
terposed. 

“Don’t they? Daddy was telling me about it, 
not so very long ago. What do you think of cutting 
the tongues out of caribou and letting them go, alive ? 
What do you think of breaking the hinge in the 
bird’s bill, if you happen to get one that you don’t 
want, and then turning it loose to starve? What 
do you think,” and Buddie wheeled about, to turn 
on Indian Bill ferociously; “of trying to make me 
pepper this jolly little bear with bullets that I knew 
could never kill him, if I kept it up, all night ? You 
know I don’t mean to funk. You know,” modesty 
was not Buddie’s besetting sin ; “I can hit just about 
anything I choose to try for ; but I’ll be hanged if I 


m BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 

care much to kill for the mere sake of killing. Live 
things weren’t put into the world for that.” 

“Bravo, Buddie! Bravissimo!” And Daddy 
stalked into the open, applauding vociferously as he 
came. “I like the things you’re saying, son, es- 
pecially as I’ve been leaving you to think them out 
for yourself. After all, though, it has rather gone 
against the grain to see my only son pick up his rifle 
and go out to destroy the one thing I’m giving my 
time to preserving.” 

Teresa looked up sharply. 

“What is that?” 

“Life itself,” the doctor answered, and his voice 
was grave. 

There came a bit of a pause. The doctor broke it. 

“Buddie, I want to talk, a minute,” he said, still 
very gravely. “No; I am not going to lecture; 
I only want to help you fight your battle by making 
you realize that certain kinds of animals are likely 
to be wiped out entirely by you hunters.” 

“Not by me,” Buddie objected promptly. 

“By just you, unless you play fair in Nature’s 
great game, Buddie. Ever so many kinds of ani- 
mals are being killed off by hunters who end a dozen 
lives where one, at most, should do ; by people who 
blaze away for the mere sake of hitting something, 
and only insist upon it that the something must be 
alive at the start and dead at the finish. I believe 
in sport, Buddie, I believe in decent hunting; but 
we doctors know so well what it is to spend years 
and strength on saving life, that we have our own 
opinion about the fellow who takes it away for the 
mere fun of killing. Ask Indian Bill, next time he 


THE LAW OF THE HUNT 


S13 


gets to arguing, where his own people would have 
been, if the game had been destroyed completely, 
years ago. Run out of itself, Teresa? It never 
would. That’s the reason people are trying to found 
ranges where hunters can’t come, guarded ranges 
where the beasts and birds can have a chance to live 
their lives and have their babies, undisturbed.” 

With an elaborate showing of mock deference, 
Buddie handed his rifle to his father ; but Dr. Angell, 
laughing, gave it back again. 

“Not a bit of it, son,” he said. “I want you to 
be a good shot. Nobody knows when it may save 
your life. And I want you to know how to hunt; 
only I’d prefer to have you hunting like a gentleman, 
with some idea that there are beast rights, as well as 
human, that the different kinds of animals were not 
made just to be swept away by careless hunters who 
turn good sport into messy butchery. That’s all, 
Buddie. Now let’s have our luncheon.” 

Next day, he found Buddie back at his old attempts 
to hit a falling coin ; and Buddie, patiently reloading, 
paused long enough to send a cheery hail. 

“At it hard. Dad. Taken as sport, it beats bears 
hollow.” 

And Daddy smiled to himself, as he walked away. 
He knew that, in time, the falling coin would pall 
on Buddie; but he thought he also knew that his 
harangue of the day before, grafted on to Buddie’s 
earlier conclusions, might save from ugly, needless, 
useless deaths more than one happy beast who ranged 
those mountains. 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 


A MAROONED TERESA 

B UDDIE’S trapeze will get the best of him, some 
day,” Tom chuckled, one night. 

Mr. Kent, the only person within reach, looked up 
from his paper. 

“You think so?” 

“Know so. If he doesn’t end by falling on top 
of Ebenezer and smashing him flat, he’ll catch him- 
self in the gearing and get hung. He came within 
an inch of both, to-day.” 

Mr. Kent looked alarmed, the futile alarm of a 
man who is able to toddle up and down the house on 
crutches which, from sheer lack of familiarity with 
their possibilities, he employs as if they were rods of 
fragile glass, likely to collapse at any instant. Not 
the most adoring of art lovers, not Ananias himself, 
could have declared that Mr. Kent was graceful 
nowadays. However, it was something to be off 
from his back and beginning to navigate again, how- 
ever clumsily. 

Even the idolizing Buddie had found it next to 
impossible to sentimentalize over Mr. Kent’s earlier 
efforts to walk with crutches. It seemed incredible 
that any human being could tie his legs and his 
wooden supports into such knots as did the tall, 
lean artist; it seemed impossible for any face to 


A MAROONED TERESA 


215 


wear such a look of pained anxiety as did his, while 
he was doing it. And, in view of the agility of his 
earlier achievements, it did seem to Buddie that he 
looked unduly smug, when once more he was seated 
safely in his chair. 

For Mr. Kent’s convalescence now was almost an 
accomplished fact. Not only was he out of bed and 
navigating himself to and fro and up and down the 
house ; but the doctor was encouraging him to bend 
his knee and exercise it all he could, to throw off the 
stiffening effect of the plaster case which had shut 
it in so long. At the first, David Kent had taken his 
instructions literally. He had started to bend down 
his knee with the suddenness and force one uses upon 
the blade of a jackknife. His idea had been to ac- 
complish a right angle; but, before the angle was 
one quarter made, the pain had been too much for 
him, and he had fainted. 

He had come to himself almost at once, however, 
and had found himself surrounded by four anxious 
faces and one that was smiling broadly. It was Dr. 
Angell who was smiling, and his voice matched his face. 

“I didn’t tell you to try to create the impression 
that you had a swivel joint in your knee, Kent,” he 
told him. “Go slow, man, or you’ll break yourself 
again. One would think you’d never had a con- 
valescence in your life.” 

“I never had,” the artist confessed meekly. 

“Or seen one.” 

“I never did.” 

“Time you had and did, then, if only to learn the 
ropes. Good heavens, man, if I tell you you can 
get out of bed for an hour, it doesn’t signify that I 


216 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


want you to go to turning handsprings. I don’t 
know whether it is the athlete of you, or the artist ; 
but I really can’t say that you seem to have much 
sense. Where is Buddie ? ” 

“Off with Teresa.” 

“Oh. Well, Tom, come here and mount guard, 
then. I’ve got to write some letters, and I want to 
leave somebody to see that Mr. Kent doesn’t dance 
a fandango, while I am about it. Kent, you are to 
mind Chubbie, or he is to report to me. There is 
a three-days-old Sun; you are to sit here and read 
it, till I give you leave to move.” And, grumbling 
jovially to himself, the doctor vanished in the di- 
rection of his tent. 

But the Sun proved less amusing than the opening 
suggested by Chubbie’s words, and the artist flung 
it down with perfect willingness. 

“ What happened ? ” he inquired. 

Tom repeated his chuckle. 

“The unexpected. Buddie fancies himself a good 
deal, now he has learned that twisty way of jumping 
from one swing to the other. You haven’t seen him 
do it yet? It’s something rich and rare to watch 
him. He grins and looks so contented, when he 
hits it off; and he turns red and rages, when he 
misses. He misses at least four times for every hit, 
so he’s mostly raging, and I generally drop in to 
watch him, while he’s at it. To-day, he got on bet- 
ter, and he was getting conceited as you please till, 
all at once, he forgot what he was doing and came 
down bang on top of Ebenezer.” 

“ Hurt Ebenezer ? ” 

“You’d have thought so. He was asleep, and 


A MAROONED TERESA 


m 

the sudden jounce went on his nerves, and he ki- 
yi-ed. That rattled Buddie ; and, next time he tried 
it, he funked and didn’t let go his hold on the first 
swing. The other one came up and took him in the 
legs and, from sheer force of habit, he gripped it with 
his toes. Next minute, there he was, swinging back 
and forth on his back, like a bit of ladder lashed be- 
tween them. You never saw such a look of surprise 
on a fellow’s face in all your life. And he couldn’t 
seem to get his grip again and make up his mind just 
what to do about it.” 

“In the air ?” 

“Rather ! About ten feet up. He looked like a 
box-turtle that has tumbled on his back, and he didn’t 
have the sense to let go anywhere. He just hung 
on; he would have been there now, if Mr. Hearn 
hadn’t come in and rescued him. Mr. Kent ? ” 

“Well?” 

“What’s the use, anyhow ?” 

“Of what?” 

Chubbie phrased it simply. 

“Trapezing.” 

“Any number of uses, Chubbie. It teaches you 
to fall on your feet, for one thing.” 

Chubbie eyed him whimsically. 

“Not on your life, if you and Buddie are fair 
samples. You lighted in a heap; Buddie hung on 
till somebody picked him off his stem and laid him 
on the ground. If that’s all you can say for it, Mr. 
Kent, I think I’ll take mine out in tennis. It’s like 
your tossing up your pennies. I hit my nose so often 
it was all purple with the whacks. Now I think I 
shall follow the example of Aunt Julia, and play pa- 


218 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


tience. It’s stupid; but it doesn’t maul one. Mr. 
Kent?” 

“Well, Chub ?” 

Tom digressed. 

“Strange how a name sticks to one!” he said. 
“I was named Thomas Augustus ; but nobody would 
believe it now. Of course, it’s pretty bad; but it 
isn’t a circumstance to Ernest Angell. But, Mr. 
Kent?” 

“Yes — er — Thomas Augustus ? ” 

“Oh, you needn’t feel obliged to call me by it,” 
Chubbie told him hastily. “I was only offering it 
to you as a sample of the things we fellows have to 
bear. It’s worse than being born with a pug nose. 
But what I started to ask you was what you really 
think about — well, about Teresa.” 

“I think she is an uncommonly nice sort of girl,” 
the artist answered, with sudden energy. 

Tom’s face cleared. 

“Do you?” he asked. “I do; but I wasn’t sure 
about it. You see, she isn’t a bit like most girls. 
She doesn’t talk about you and her — I mean, about 
me and she — I mean — ” Then Chubbie aban- 
doned the effort to clarify his pronouns. “That is, 
she talks about the things that happen, not the things 
she’s thinking. And she can drive nails, and get 
stones out of Toddie’s hoof, when I can’t. And, 
when Buddie cut himself, the other day, she wiped it 
off and put on the plaster without making hardly 
any fuss at all.” 

“ Good for Teresa ! ” the artist said, with a show 
of hearty approbation intended to conceal his sudden 
wave of intense self-consciousness. 


A MAROONED TERESA 219 

His rising colour betrayed him however, and Chub- 
bie became self-conscious in his turn. 

“Oh, I say, I wasn’t aiming that at you,” he 
blurted out, in his own self-consciousness rendering 
the bad matter vastly worse. Then he made a sud- 
den rally. “It’s only that I sometimes wonder — 
That is — Mr. Kent,” he dropped his voice to a con- 
fidential murmur; “you don’t suppose, do you, that 
Teresa is a suffragette ? ” 

Mrs. Brooks MacDougall came running to find 
out the meaning of the roar which David Kent let 
off in answer to the question, and, amid the explana- 
tions, Chubbie made his escape. Later, though, he 
took the matter up with Buddie, and Buddie 
promptly smote him, first for his lack of tact, and 
then for his evil-minded imaginings. 

“Teresa a suffragette!” he sniffed disdainfully. 
“Chub, you’re a silly. Teresa doesn’t break win- 
dows, and bat policemen with her bonnet; does 
she?” 

“No. But, you see, she isn’t afraid of blood, and 
she can bait her own hook, when she goes fishing,” 
Chubbie argued. 

“Who wants her to be afraid of blood and bait and 
things? Besides, what is a suffragette, anyhow?” 
Buddie demanded. 

And Tom’s answer contained the pith of modern 
politics. 

“A girl that’s looking for a row.” 

Buddie accepted the definition on its merits. 

“Exactly. And that’s not Teresa. She never 
fights, except when she knows she’s cornered. Then 
she goes it. Moreover, Chubbie Neal, when she 


no BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


does go, you have to stand from under. By the way, 
where is she now ? ” 

“ She went up the canon, just a little while ago.” 

“With ?” Buddie queried. 

“Alone.” 

“Then she won’t be left to stay so.” And Buddie, 
whistling to Ebenezer, started in pursuit. 

Contrary to his expectations, he experienced some 
difficulties in finding Teresa. The canon was not 
very wide, nor was it overgrown with underbrush. 
Yet, for a time, he walked along the bank of the small 
river without catching a glimpse of the familiar yel- 
low pigtails for which his eyes were bent. He was 
just about to give up the search, under the impression 
that Chubbie had directed him wrongly ; but, upon 
second thoughts, he decided that he would give one 
call to assure himself whether or not she was within 
hailing distance. Accordingly, the rocks about him 
jarred with the Teresa I he sent out against them, and 
the walls of the lower canon took up the echo and 
tossed it on and on. Buddie, though, was deaf to 
the echo, so surprised was he at the meek response 
which seemed to come from some point close to his 
right elbow. 

“Yes.” 

Buddie spun about. 

“ That you, Teresa ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“Where are you ?” 

“Here.” And a yellow head appeared above the 
top of a rock in mid-stream. 

“What in the world are you doing Buddie 
queried, with not unnatural surprise, for he could 


A MAROONED TERESA 


m 

see no especial reason that Teresa should be sitting, 
like a petticoated hen, between three or four small 
boulders which lay, a tiny island, just in the middle 
of the roaring river. 

Her answer to his question in no way lessened the 
surprise, for, — 

“Feeling like a fool,” she said, with inelegant 
directness. 

Buddie, his fists in his pockets, strolled farther up 
the bank, until he reached a spot whence he could 
obtain an uninterrupted view. Then, — 

“Well, I should think you would,” he said flatly, 
as his eyes roved from Teresa to the volume in her 
hand. A moment later, his eyes rested upon the 
wide margins of the open page. “Poetry, too, by 
jiggums !” he remarked uncouthly. 

Teresa had the grace to blush. 

“I was homesick,” she explained. 

Again Buddie’s gaze rambled dispassionately up 
and down across the scene. 

“Well, I should think you would have been,” he 
said. 

“No.” Teresa spoke a little testily. It had 
seemed to her so very right and proper to construe a 
fit of indigestion into righteous homesickness, so very 
grown-up and romantic to attempt to cure it with 
a woodland walk in the society of Lucile. Not that 
Teresa had read Lucile. It had been a school prize, 
and she had put it in her trunk, partly for its pretty 
binding, partly because it was the one book of 
poetry that she chanced to own, and poetry was sup- 
posed to be a prime necessity of summer travel. 
To-day, however, the dull weight of indigestion had 


222 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


convinced her that her hour for poetry was ripe. 
Besides, the soft green leather of the cover was most 
effective against her paler linen frock. It was dis- 
appointing to have her effect marred by certain 
practical considerations as to her return. But, 
“No,” she answered swiftly; “that was before this 
happened.” 

“Oh.” Buddie’s accent was not too respectful. 
“ Well, how are you getting on ? ” 

“I am feeling better now,” Teresa told him, with 
some dignity. 

Buddie repressed a smile. 

“I must say, you don’t look it,” he observed. 
“ How long do you plan to stay there ? ” 

Teresa’s dignity increased. 

“I think I am ready to come, any time,” she an- 
swered sedately. 

“All right. Where’s the boat ? ” 

“There isn’t any.” 

“ How did you get over there, then ? J ump ? ” 

“ Don’t be silly, Buddie.” 

In his own mind, Buddie admitted the fairness of 
her rebuke. The rocky islet where she stood was 
a good ten feet from shore. Teresa was moder- 
ately agile; but not even her agility could take a 
leap like that, and land imerringly upon the little 
hummock of stones that clustered in mid-stream. 

Buddie pursued his investigations. 

“Did you wade, then ?” 

“N — no.” Teresa plainly was faltering upon 
the verge of a confession. “Not exactly. At least 
— You see — ” 

“I don’t see,” Buddie said flatly. “If you’ve 



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A MAROONED TERESA 223 

anything to tell, out with it, and then come along 
ashore.” 

Teresa blurted out the gist of her confession. 

“ That’s just it. I can’t.” 

‘‘Why not.?” 

“The stones tipped over, and I can’t get back 
without them.” 

“Stones?” 

“Yes.” Teresa made a hasty clutch at her van- 
ishing dignity. “I felt lonely and blue, so I took my 
book and came here to read. I started up the canon, 
and saw this island, and I knew, if I could get to it, 
I could have it all to myself.” 

“I thought you said just now that you were lone- 
some,” Buddie said shrewdly. 

“So I was. Only I didn’t want the wrong peo- 
ple—” 

“Am I wrong ?” Buddie demanded. 

“No; not more than everybody.” Teresa had 
no intention of being malign; but there had been 
rice muffins with their luncheon. Teresa had eaten 
many, and their trail was still upon her. “But I 
thought I’d like to come across here, and read, and 
be quiet. So I crossed on the stones. But they 
wobbled and rolled over, and I had to jump, to keep 
from getting wet. That rolled them all the more, and, 
for all I know, they are rolling yet ; and here I am.” 

“Like it?” Buddie queried, with a chuckle, for 
he had made out the geographical isolation of Teresa’s 
present position. 

Her dignity vanished before his mirth. 

“Of course not, Buddie.” 

“But you’re there, and you’re all alone with your 


224 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


book of poems. Moreover, you’ve pulled up your 
sidewalk behind you, so you are likely to have the 
place to yourself for some time yet. You ought to 
be contented.” 

Whatever Chubbie’s opinion earlier, he would have 
been the first to say that now there was no hint of 
the suffragette in Teresa’s answer. Rather than 
militant, it was frankly pleading. 

“ Get me ashore, Buddie ; there’s a dear.” 

“Wade,” Buddie advised her tersely. 

Teresa glanced at the swirling current that fretted 
and foamed between them. 

“Too deep, and too fast, Buddie. I’m afraid.” 

Buddie sat down on the bank and clasped his knees 
with his arms. 

“You needn’t think I’m going to lug you,” he 
argued. “You weigh every bit as much as I do. 
Besides, you have two perfectly good feet of your 
own. If I can wade it, you can.” 

“Yes, but—” 

“Sure.” 

“It’s cold,” she urged. 

“Naturally. Mountain streams generally are; 
that’s why we quaff ’em,” Buddie responded, with 
one of his occasional lapses into poetic phrase. “It 
isn’t any colder for you than it is for me, and I didn’t 
get you into the scrape, anyhow.” 

Teresa’s feelings betrayed her into a sniff. 

“I thought boy scouts had alittle chivalry,” she said. 

“So they have,” Buddie retorted sharply. “Still, 
it takes a stronger horse than chivalry to carry one 
hundred and thirty pounds of girl across ten feet of 
fizzy rapids. I’d do it, if I could, Teresa; but I 


A MAROONED TERESA £25 

couldn’t stir you an inch. It would be as much as 
I could do to get you pig-back, let alone carrying 
you. No; you’vegot to wade.” 

Teresa’s answer renewed his former surprise, in- 
creased it, even. 

“All right,” she said. Then, quite calmly, she 
sat down on a corner of the largest stone, opened her 
mossy-green book and fell to reading with ostenta- 
tious absorption in her text. 

Buddie waited for a minute. Then, — 

“Oh, well, two can play at that game,” he said 
and, lying back upon the river bank, he apparently 
lost himself in contemplation of the clouds above him. 

For quite a long time, the clouds seemed to be 
occupying his thoughts completely. Then, despite 
his resolutions to the contrary, the vagueness left 
his eyes; they gathered focus, interest. The in- 
terest, however, appeared to concentrate itself, not 
upon Teresa, but upon a long, lithe sapling that 
sprang up from the river bank beside him and, after 
the fashion of canon-growing trees, stretched up and 
up, almost unbranching, to its very top. 

“Gee !” Buddie observed to himself, the while he 
studied it. “I’ll be hanged, if she deserves it; but 
it looks fun enough to be worth the trying.” 

With Buddie, suggestions never waited for much 
pondering. A moment later, he was on his legs and 
moving towards the sapling. A moment later still, 
his arms and legs were knotted around the tree in the 
position of one who is doing the thing colloquially 
known as shinning. And Teresa, marooned in mid- 
stream, continued to read Lucile with a praiseworthy 
diligence born of self-conscious pique. 


226 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


Suddenly a shadow fell across her book, a shadow 
whose arising had been heralded by grunts and sounds 
of scraping and scrabbling. Teresa saw the shadow 
and judged that the time had come for her to raise 
her eyes. Holding her curiosity in check so far as 
might be, she did raise them, deliberately at first, 
then with a sudden ducking of her head. Across the 
stream arched a small, slender sapling. From its 
slim top, Buddie was dangling in the air above her 
head. 

“Catch hold !” he adjured her, as he met her eye. 
“It will take us both. Come on.’^ Then he fell to 
kicking wildly, until the branches thrashed the air. 
“That brings it down a little lower,” he explained 
breathlessly. “ Can you make it ? ” 

The stretch was a long one; but, quicker than 
thought, Teresa had dropped Lucile and made a 
snatch for the nearest tuft of leaves. A minute after- 
ward, she too was dangling in mid-air above the rocky 
islet. 

Buddie spoke with increasing breathlessness. 

“Bully for you, Teresa! That’s good! That’s 
just great ! Now you hang on, and I’ll work down 
a little. That will shift the weight and let the tree 
straighten up again. Once she is straight,” and now 
his phrases were punctuated by the sounds of shin- 
ning down ; “and on her own side of the river, we can 
slide down her as easy as anything. This is better 
than a trapeze, any day. Wish Mr. Kent could 
see — Hull — 1 — 1 — looooo !” 

For, with a sudden snapping of leafy twigs, Teresa 
and the sapling parted company. Teresa sought the 
deepest portion of the rapids, where she landed at 


A MAROONED TERESA 


m 


full length in the foamy water; while the sapling, 
relieved of her weight, went flashing upwards to its 
old position, with a sudden force that landed Buddie 
in the weeds, a good half way up the canon’s nearer 
bank. 

And, as he landed, the voice of Tom came to his 
ears, a calm voice and not too sympathetic. 

“Never mind, Buddie,” it said. “I can tell him, 
so he will be quite sure to understand.” 

And then the speaker took to his heels, before the 
onslaught of an irate and dripping Teresa. 


CHAPTER TWENTY 


CHUBBIE ? 

I T was only the next morning that Tom made a 
bleak discovery. Made, he reported it to Buddie 
without loss of time. 

“I say,” he announced, without preface; “school 
begins, in just two weeks.” 

“What of it ? ” Buddie demanded callously. 

“ Of it ? We’ll have to go back home.” 

“Well, don’t you want to ?” 

Tom shook his head. 

“Not much. I like it better here.” 

“For summer, yes. Not for always, though. 
Besides, you like your school. The first of the time 
I knew you, you bragged about it by the hour.” 
Tom had the grace to blush. 

“That was before I got used to things out here. 
Besides, school is school. This is the kind of thing 
home — used to be.” 

And Buddie had the tact to nod in silence. At 
times, the point of view of Tom was more or less 
opaque to him ; but he had learned to know Tom’s 
moods of seriousness and to respect them. Besides, 
whatever the charms of boarding school, it must be 
a great bore not to have the right sort of place to go 
in vacation, a place where one belonged, where one 
could, if he chose, leave his boots beside the down- 


CHUBBIE? 


229 


stairs heater, over night. Therefore, Buddie had 
the sense and tact to demand no further explanation 
on the part of Tom. Instead, he asked a question. 

“When do you expect to leave here.?^” 

“That’s just the trouble,” Tom replied, a little 
blankly. “I hadn’t expected. It didn’t strike me, 
till this morning, that this sort of thing couldn’t 
go on for ever. What’s more, I don’t believe it 
has struck my father, for he hasn’t written one single 
word about my coming. When do you go?” 

“Not for a month yet. Aunt Julia wants us to 
stay, and Daddy seems to think that school can wait. 
Why can’t you stay on here, too?” 

Tom shook his head. 

“That’s not my father,” he replied; and Buddie, 
from his accent, judged that here was another theme 
to be avoided. 

“Anyhow,” Buddie remarked, after an interval; 
“I am not going away till I can hit a falling penny 
at one hundred yards, and till I can get that double 
turn in going from one swing to the other.” 

And then it was that Tom showed the first gleam 
of fun that he had betrayed, that morning. 

“In that case,” he retorted; “I advise you to 
send for your winter flannels. Else, you’d best go 
home, and finish off your lessons there.” 

“Can’t. No teacher,” Buddie told him briefly. 

“Anybody can toss a coin, and then dodge the 
results; and Mr. Kent lives in New York, too.” 

“He’s staying on.” 

“Really? What for?” 

“He says that it’s by Daddy’s orders; that he 
oughtn’t to take the journey till his leg is strong. 


230 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


But I imagine it is only so much vanity,” Buddie 
answered shrewdly. “He probably hates to go 
limping around the city, leaning on a stick.” 

“There’s always a taxi,” Tom objected. 

“Yes; but he couldn’t have one driven in at his 
front door; that is, unless it skidded. And Mr. 
Kent is very vain,” Buddie added reflectively. 

“How do you know ?” 

“Watching. Ever notice the way he arranges his 
legs, when he sits down, and then waits till he thinks 
you aren’t watching, before he hitches up his trousers 
at the knees ? Ever notice the way he keeps his 
hands, and the colour of his ring?” Then Buddie 
relented swiftly. “I must say, it doesn’t hurt him 
any,” he added. “If he were littler, and not so 
healthy, and couldn’t do handsprings and the pinky- 
purple pictures that Aunt Julia raves about, he 
would be just funny. As it is, one forgets the silly 
part, in thinking about the rest.” 

Tom heaved a sigh. 

“His pictures are very queer,” he said quite 
thoughtfully. “They look right, till you stop to 
think about them. Then you wonder why he paints 
pink bears in a garden of pale blue cabbages.” 

Buddie looked shocked. 

“Chubbie, what twaddle! Mr. Kent doesn’t do 
that,” he protested loyally. “He just splashes on a 
lot of purple and blue paint, after the rest is done. 
I suppose he likes it, the way Teresa likes the col- 
oured ribbons on her pigtails, thinks it sets the nat- 
ural colour off. For my part, though, I don’t care 
about it. I’d rather my own pictures would match 
up to the things I paint; but — ” 


CHUBBIE? 


231 


Tom interrupted. 

“By the way, how is your picture coming on?” 
he queried. 

Buddie looked up blankly. 

“I’m not making any pictures. I’m no artist.” 

“No. You’re the Purple Cow.” And Tom 
chuckled. “I mean the picture Mr. Kent was doing 
of you and Ebenezer.” 

“Oh, that’s done,” Buddie told him easily. 

“Since when?” 

“ Since ? Why, since then ; since that morning. 
Mr. Kent was at it, more than two hours. Gee ! 
How I ached, before he’d finished it!” 

“But it isn’t finished,” Tom asserted. 

“How do you know?” 

“He said so. He said — at least, he wondered, 
when he would be able to finish it ; and that’s the 
same thing.” 

“When did he say that?” 

“One day, about a week or ten days after he was 
hurt. He was fussing about it, all one morning.” 

“Fudge I” Buddie told him flatly. “It was done, 
that day.” 

“Did you see it?” 

“N — no; not exactly.” 

“Then how do you know ?” 

“By the time he was about it. He was really 
just about all of one half day, with the getting 
ready, and all. It must be done.” 

“He said not.” 

Buddie shut his lips. 

“I didn’t think he’d be so dead slow as all that,” 
he said disappointedly. 


232 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


Tom’s reply savoured of flatness. 

“Well, he is.” 

“Hm ! In that case, then, he’d better be getting 
about it,” Buddie remarked, after an interval of 
pondering. ‘T told him I’d see him through, if he 
really can’t get on without me; but, all things 
considered, the sooner he gets it done, the better.” 

“If he’s able,” Tom put in, by way of parenthesis. 

“Able ! He doesn’t paint with his legs.” 

“No; but he paints on them.” 

“Ankles, or shins?” Buddie queried flippantly. 
“I’ve had mine black and blue, and green and 
yellow, myself ; it’s not too hard to do.” 

Tom became coldly literal. 

“I mean that he stands on his legs, while he is 
painting,” he explained laboriously. “I have 
watched him often.” 

“That’s no sign he needs to,” Buddie retorted. 
“When I had mumps, I took my paintbox into bed 
with me, and did a corking picture of Daniel and the 
other chaps, sitting in the furnace. There were four 
of them to manage, and all the flames besides, and 
there are only two of Ebenezer and me. He ought 
to be able to do as much as that, sitting down. 
Anyhow, I’m going to ask him now, for it’s a shame 
to waste all these wet days, when we none of us can 
be doing much of anything but sit about. Where’s 
my cap? Hi, Ebenezer!” And Buddie vanished 
on his errand. 

To his extreme surprise, he found the artist missing. 
Also he found, sitting in the deck chair where, the 
past few days, the artist had been wont to sprawl. 
Aunt Julia with some flimsy bit of work or other in 


CHUBBIE? 233 

her hands. She looked up, smiling, as Buddie’s red 
head appeared within the framing doorway. 

“Well, Buddie, good morning. You are looking 
for Mr. Kent.f^ He’s busy in the other room, an- 
swering some letters, so I took possession of his 
chair. Really, it is very comfortable. Sit down 
and amuse me.” 

For Aunt Julia was by far too wily to allow 
Buddie to suspect how deliberately she had placed 
herself there to await his coming. That would 
have been to handicap her purpose at the start. 

Buddie cast a wistful glance in the direction of the 
other room. Aunt Julia caught the glance and 
answered it. 

“He will be out in just a little while,” she said. 
“I imagine they were business letters, or something 
else important, because he shut the door. He had 
an idea that you would be here early, and I promised 
him that I would hold on to you until he reappeared. 
Where is Tom ?” 

“Up at our tent.” 

“Why didn’t he come down?” 

Buddie looked a trifle feazed. 

“Honestly, I didn’t think to ask him. To tell 
the truth, I came for something special, and didn’t 
think about much else.” 

“Anything wrong, Buddie?” 

“No; not really. That is, well — no. It’s only 
about a picture Mr. Kent painted of Ebenezer and 
me. Chub thinks it isn’t done. I hated it; but I 
promised I would see him through it, so I thought 
perhaps I’d better come and ask him.” 

Aunt Julia threaded her needle. Then, — 


234 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“Nice of you, if you really do hate it, Buddie. 
I should hate it, I know; but a promise has to be 
a promise, hate or no hate. Really, I don’t believe 
it can be finished yet ; but we’ll ask him.” 

“Chub is on his nerves, this morning,” Buddie 
volunteered, during a momentary silence which 
Aunt Julia had employed in wondering how she 
could drag the talk around to that selfsame subject. 

She looked up, with sudden interest. 

“Tom.?” 

“Yes.” 

“I didn’t know he was given to getting on his 
nerves.” 

“He is, just awfully. It comes on the nineteenth 
of the month, like the Venite, and on wet days, and 
nights when you’ve forgotten your theories and given 
him coffee. And then he takes it out on me,” 
Buddie added plaintively. 

“Poor Buddie! Does he fight?” 

“Fight! I wish he would. He just gets sorry 
for himself, and that is worse than any amount of 
fighting.” 

Aunt Julia smoothed out her work on her knee, 
and studied it intently. Then, — 

“Yes, Buddie, I honestly think it is,” she assented 
then. “And yet — ” She stopped her sentence 
abruptly, and fell to pulling her work this way and 
that to fiatten out the stitches. 

Patient endurance of his own curiosity had never 
been Buddie’s strongest point. He prodded Aunt 
Julia past her pause. 

“And yet ?” 

She lifted her eyes and looked at him as guilelessly 


CHUBBIE? 


235 


as if it all : conversation, and pause, and apparent 
absorption in her work, had not been the results of 
her long talk with Daddy, only the night before. 
The talk had ended with a charge laid upon her by 
Daddy, before he went away to bed. 

“Sound him on it, then, Julia, and see just how 
he really feels. I wouldn’t do it, if I thought it 
would make him one bit less happy.” 

“Even for a few weeks? Even if he would be 
happier than ever in the end?” Aunt Julia had 
questioned. 

Daddy had shaken his head. 

“I am not too sure,” he answered. 

But Aunt Julia had nodded. She was very sure. 
And, because of her surety of the final result of her 
talk with Buddie, she went on without much real 
hesitation, — 

“And yet, I can’t much wonder.” 

“That it is worse?” Buddie questioned. 

“No; that Tom does feel just a little sorry for 
himself.” Aunt Julia picked up her work again. 
“Anyway, I feel sorry for him.” 

“Why?” Buddie’s accent was dispassionate, 
cheerful. 

“No mother,” Aunt Julia suggested. 

Then her cheeks went scarlet at Buddie’s answer, 
“But he’s got you, same as I have. Aunt Julia.” 

For a minute, something glittered on Aunt Julia’s 
lashes. She had supposed that she had gained her 
full reward for her hospitality to a motherless 
boy in the enjoyment she had taken out of his 
society. Now she found that a reward even greater, 
even more lasting, was awaiting her. 


236 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“Thank you, Buddie,” she said gently. “That 
was very dear of you. But about Tom,” she hesi- 
tated; then, as she met Buddie’s adoring eyes, she 
determined to speak out; “Buddie, it ought not to 
be different, for I love Tom and he is the nephew 
of the other half of me; but I can’t help feeling 
that I’m a little bit more related to you, after all.” 

Buddie gulped suddenly. 

“Shake !” he said, as he stuck out his hand. 

“But, to go back to Tom,” Aunt Julia went on, 
after a little; “he really doesn’t seem to have much 
of anybody belonging to him.” 

“His father?” Buddie suggested promptly. 

“Yes, after a fashion. But Mr. Neal is — Well, 
he isn’t just like your own father.” 

Once more Buddie’s reply came promptly. 

“Who is?” 

“Not too many men. But poor Mr. Neal has 
never been the same, since Tom’s mother died. It 
was as if something froze up inside him, then.” 

“Poor soul !” Buddie made sympathetic com- 
ment. “Can’t they roast it out?” 

Mrs. MacDougall barely repressed a smile. With 
the best of intentions to the contrary, the average 
healthy boy was bound to be prosaic. 

“In time, perhaps. They haven’t been able to 
do it yet. In the meantime, it is rather hard on 
Tom.” 

“He’s got his school.” 

“So have you; but you don’t find it everything 
you want.” 

“Oh, no.” Buddie’s voice was full of supreme 
content. “But then, you know, I’ve got Daddy.” 


CHUBBIE? 


m 

“And Tom hasn’t,” Aunt Julia said, and then she 
began sewing rather steadily. Buddie watched her 
just as steadily. Her sudden industry, coupled with 
the curious watchfulness that had been in her eyes : 
these rendered him suspicious, though of what he 
did not know. According to the directness of his 
nature, he put the question to her flatly. 

“What are you driving at. Aunt Julia? I can’t 
well split up Daddy and make a pair of him.” 

“N — no.” Aunt Julia still appeared to be 
absorbed in the setting of her stitches. “ You needn’t 
exactly split him; but you could share him, if you 
were willing.” 

“How?” Buddie flung the question at her with 
a bump. 

Aunt Julia deliberately folded up her work, folded 
her hands upon it, and then smiled across at Buddie. 

“Buddie,” she asked him; “how would you like 
it, if Daddy should ask Tom to spend the winter 
with you?” 

“Tom? Tom Neal? Chub?” The repeated 
question showed how far the idea had been from 
Buddie’s heart. 

“Yes.” 

“The whole winter ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“And go to my school ?” 

“Yes.” 

“I shouldn’t like it one little bit of a bit,” Buddie 
assured her flatly. 

“Why not?” 

The flatness continued, even increased a little. 

“Because he would be in the way.” 


^38 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“Of what?’’ 

The meaning of his own phrase brought a note 
of content to Buddie’s voice. 

“Oh, just Daddy and me.” 

“He needn’t,” Aunt Julia said quietly. 

“He would.” 

“Not unless you let him.” 

“Oh, I say!” Buddie stared at her rebukingly. 
“If he was really there. Aunt Julia, we couldn’t 
shut him out.” 

But she cast the rebuke back upon him. 

“I didn’t mean that, Buddie. What I did mean 
was that you needn’t allow yourself to think about 
him as being in the way. Daddy is broad enough 
to take in more than one person at a time; you 
ought to want to be as broad as he is.” 

Buddie flinched. Then he owned up. 

“But I’m not. Aunt Julia. My world hasn’t but 
one Daddy in it. I don’t want to share him with 
anybody who happens to come along.” 

“If the anybody needs him ?” 

“They don’t. That is, not as I do.” 

“But you have him, anyway.” 

“I wouldn’t, though — ” 

Aunt Julia interrupted him, with a little smile. 

“Buddie, if there were a dozen Toms in every 
single room in your house, do you believe it would 
make any difference in Daddy’s ways with you?” 

And Buddie made honest answer, — 

“No; I don’t.” 

“Besides,” Aunt Julia added, after a minute more ; 
“Tom isn’t everybody.” 

“N— no.” 


CHUBBIE? 


239 


‘‘And you like him.” 

“Y-yes.” 

This time, Aunt Julia looked surprised in earnest. 

“Don’t you really like him, Buddie? I thought 
you were getting on all right.” 

Buddie plumped his elbows on his knees, folded 
his hands and spoke despondingly. 

“So we are; that’s just the trouble. We like 
each other, we never fight; but we never in this 
world are going to be chums.” 

''Never is a long word, Buddie.” 

“I know that; but I mean it, all the same. I 
don’t know why we don’t get on any better. We 
started off all right; we like each other. It’s only 
that we seem to go our ways, unless there is some- 
body around : you, or Indian Bill, or Teresa, to hold 
us together.” 

“Whose fault is it, Buddie ?” Aunt Julia put the 
question, not rebukingly, but with an honest effort 
to find out the truth. 

Buddie’s reply was just as honest. 

“Not either of us. Aunt JuKa. It just is. It is 
like a fence that we can’t seem to climb. And the 
queerest thing about it all is that we honestly do 
like each other. Perhaps, if we fought, there’d be 
more hope for us. Anyhow, you must have seen,” 
and once again a despairing note rang in Buddie’s 
voice; “that our being together hasn’t panned out 
exactly as you meant to have it.” 

For the moment. Aunt Julia lost a little of her 
downrightness. She had a notion that it would be 
best for Buddie not to know how far the intuition 
of his elders had been fallible. 


m BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“In that case — ” she was beginning; but Buddie 
cut her short. 

“No, wait,” he bade her; “I want to think it 
over just a little.” And think he did, biting his 
lips and scowling at the floor. Then, at last, his 
face cleared, the frown left his eyes, and the wonted 
happy curves came back about his lips. “Aunt 
Julia,” he said then; “I think it’s rather up to me. 
I’ve got more chances to make good than Chubbie 
has; it’s fair I should let him have a show at any 
extra chance that’s coming to him. I like him. We 
don’t fight ; and you say,” he gulped a little; “that 
all the Chubbies in the world won’t make the slightest 
difference between Daddy and me. Then, if that 
is true, let’s have him come. It can’t make any 
difference to me ; and, in the long run, it may make 
a pile of difference to him. Will you tell Daddy ; 
or shall I ? ” And thus, in apparent carelessness, 
but with an inward struggle that had cost him dear, 
thus had Buddie made his great renunciation. 

And, in spite of Aunt Julia’s surety, in the end it 
did make a difference with Daddy, a great, great 
difference; but the difference was all in Buddie’s 
favour. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 

BUDDIE EATS HUMBLE PIE 

“/^NCE I get rid of these other things, we’ll pro- 
ceed to enjoy ourselves,” Buddie said to 
Teresa, the next day. 

“Don’t we now ?” 

“Yes; but it’s different. We’ve been jogging 
along as if we had all the rest of time ahead of us. 
Now I mean to make the very most of every hour 
that’s left.” 

“You talk as if you were expecting the end of the 
world,” Teresa told him shrewdly. “Chubbie isn’t 
so upsetting as all that.” | 

“No; not really. And yet, after all,” Buddie 
wrinkled his brows; “he doesn’t quite belong, and 
it is going to be any amount of work to fit him in.” 

“ Ye — es,” Teresa agreed thoughtfully. “And 
the worst of it is that he won’t be the one to go to 
work to fit himself. That’s the trouble with 
Chubbie : he leaves you to do all the work ; he takes 
it as it comes.” 

“And, if it doesn’t come?” Buddie looked up 
from the shoe that he had stooped to tie. 

“Then he doesn’t take it. He just hangs back 
and looks dejected. I do hate that sorry-for-myself 
expression that he gets on sometimes.” Teresa spoke 
with sudden energy. “I suppose he really is un- 


242 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


happy about it; but he needn’t take it out on us. 
I think it’s a person’s duty to look happy, however he 
is feeling. And misery isn’t only unbecoming; it 
is very catching.” 

“Anyhow,” Buddie tightened the shoestrings with 
a jerk; “you and I are going to make the most of 
our good times, Teresa. What is the very soonest 
day that you’ll have to start ?” 

“Two weeks from yesterday.” 

Buddie whistled dejectedly, and hunched his 
shoulders. 

“By Jove, I’ll be catching misery on my own 
account, Teresa. That’s awfully soon. And you’ve 
only just landed here.” 

“Seven weeks,” she reminded him. 

“Is it.^ It doesn’t seem so long. And so many 
other things have come into the time. Of course, 
we’ve had any amount of fun; and yet I begin to 
wish there hadn’t been so many other people in — 
But two weeks is better than nothing. We’ll make 
the most of it.” 

“And Chubbie ?” Teresa questioned. 

Buddie’s reply lacked the saving grace of charity. 

“Chubbie go hang !” he said. 

“Buddie!” 

But Buddie continued unregenerate. 

“Teresa!” 

“I didn’t think you’d be a pig,” she told him. 

“I’m not. I’m a good boy,” Buddie retorted. 
“What’s more, I want my reward. If I am going 
to have Chubbie Neal on my hands, all winter, I 
think I might be allowed to take a vacation from him 
now.” 


BUDDIE EATS HUMBLE PIE 243 


Teresa mounted the pinnacle of sanctimonious 
girlhood. 

“But you like Tom, Buddie,” she reminded her 
companion, and her accent was maternal. 

“ So I do like boiled mutton. That doesn’t signify 
that I want to eat it, ten days out of every nine.” 
And then Buddie added, with crushing finality, “But 
girls can’t understand a thing like that, anyway.” 

However, Teresa helped herself to the last word. 

“Maybe not; but at least they can understand 
things like you and Chubbie Neal. Before this 
winter is half over, you’ll wonder how you ever were 
able to get on without him.” 

“ You like Chubbie so much as all that, Teresa ?” 
And Buddie stared at her in blank astonishment. 

“I like him. What’s more, I’m going to like him 
a whole lot better, after he has been in the same 
house with you, Buddie. You aren’t very sancti- 
fied; but you do take it out of people for their 
general improvement. I watched it work with 
Eric, you know. He hasn’t been half so priggy, since 
you went for him, a few times.” 

“I never went for Eric,” Buddie protested. 

But Eric’s older sister disagreed. 

“Perhaps you didn’t know it ; but you did. What 
is more, you did it so emphatically that Eric is still 
wondering what it was that struck him. If you’d 
meant to do it, it might not have had one half so 
much effect. And that’s the way it’s bound to be 
with Chubbie Neal.” 

“Chubbie is a good boy,” Buddie observed, with 
a slight touch of condescension. 

Teresa flashed. 


244 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 

“You needn’t be so high and mighty, though. Of 
course he is. And,” Teresa’s charm lay in the 
agility with which she was able to shift her point of 
view; “and, if you try to take it out of him too 
much, Buddie Angell, you will be a beast.” 

Buddie stuck his fists into his pockets. 

“In other words, you’ll be hanged, if you do; 
and also hanged, if you don’t. Any other good 
advice you’d like to pour out on me, Teresa ? ” 

“No ; that’s all for now, so don’t be cross, Buddie. 
Honestly, I do know how you probably feel about 
it, even if I won’t give in and sympathize with you. 
It’s going to be horrid, just at first. You’ll write to 
me all about it ? Yes, every single week. And 
I’ll write to you, and tell you what I think you ought 
to do, in this first real crisis of your life, and — ” 

But Buddie cut her off in her prime. 

“Stow your poetry, Teresa !” he warned her. 

Her colour came. Then she laughed. That was 
the joy of Teresa, Buddie thought. She always 
could be made to see her own absurdity. 

“All right. Now come along and do things,” 
she said, with perfect good temper. 

Buddie shook his head. 

“ Can’t, to-day, Teresa.” 

“Why not?” 

“I’ve got to sit.” 

“To — ?” Then her accent changed to a real 
anxiety that betrayed her honest liking for her boy 
companion. “What’s the matter, Buddie? Aren’t 
you well ? ” 

“Aren’t I well?” Buddie stared at her in aston- 
ishment at her irrelevant question, “ Yes, of course.” 


BUDDIE EATS HUMBLE PIE 245 

“Then why can’t you come and do things ? Why 
have you got to keep still?” Teresa questioned 
blankly. 

Buddie stared at her for a minute. Then he burst 
into a roar of laughter. 

“Teresa ! Oh, Teresa ! Well, if you aren’t the 
limit !” he gasped. “I haven’t got a pain, or faint, 
or anything like that. I mean I’ve got to finish 
sitting for my picture.” 

“What picture ?” 

“The one that Mr. Kent was doing of Ebenezer.” 

“Oh. But, if it’s of Ebenezer, where do you come 
in?” Teresa inquired, with pardonable curiosity. 

“I’m the background,” Buddie answered. “Eb- 
enezer has to have something to lean against, or else 
he would wiggle.” 

“Is it fun?” 

“No; it’s horrid. You just sit and sit, and think 
about the things you wish you were doing, and you 
get a cramp in your shin, and then you itch some- 
where that is out of reach. And, most of the time, 
he is too busy to pay much attention to you, any- 
way. For all the good I did him, a good share of 
the time, I might as well have been swimming in the 
creek back of our tent. He looked at his picture 
ten times as often as he looked at me.” 

“ How poky ! How did you ever come to let him ? ” 

“Look at his picture-thing ? He didn’t ask.” 

“No. Let him paint you, in the first place?” 

Buddie sighed. 

“He wanted to. When Mr. Kent wants things, 
Teresa, I don’t know why it is, but I can’t seem to 
stand up against him.” 


246 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


Teresa’s words betrayed her comprehension. 

“Queer; isn’t it I think it’s his eyes.” 

“No; it’s the way he half smiles, when he is talk- 
ing to you, and talks somehow at the mountains ever 
so far away, but as if he knew that you were there 
with them, and listening.” Then Buddie dropped 
his effort at analysis and spoke briskly. “Anyhow, 
I’ve got to go, Teresa. I’ll see you after lunch.” 

“Let me go, too,” she suggested. 

But Buddie shook his head. 

“Not this time. I want to go alone, to-day, 
because I’ve got some things I want to say to him.” 

“To Mr. Kent?” 

“Yes.” 

“Secrets ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ What sort ? ” she asked him coaxingly. 

“Things I’d rather tell him, first,” Buddie re- 
sponded, with unusual gravity. “It’s fairer, Teresa. 
I sha’n’t feel quite square with him, either, until I 
get it done.” And then, refusing all her efforts to 
worm her way into his confidence, Buddie turned on 
his heel and went tramping away in the direction of 
the studio. 

He found Mr. Kent already there, ahead of him. 
When Buddie appeared, the artist, leaning on one 
crutch, was trying to drag his easel forward from 
the corner where it had been abandoned, weeks 
before. He looked up, as Buddie’s shadow darkened 
the floor at his feet. 

“Oh, Buddie, can you help me here?” he asked. 

“Sure. Here, let me do it. It is too heavy for 
you, till you are steadier on your legs than you are 


BUDDIE EATS HUMBLE PIE 247 

now. Where do you want it ? Over there ? All 
right; you just stand from under.” And, with a 
twitch and a scrape, the easel was jerked into posi- 
tion. Then, “What next?” Buddie demanded. 

“That square frame with the canvas stretched 
over it. Yes, that one. Careful, Buddie ! ” Then 
Mr. Kent edged backwards and stared with half-shut 
eyes. “Jove ! I’d no idea it was so good,” he said 
to himself, quite low. 

Buddie, at his elbow, felt that his enthusiasm was 
hardly justified by the amount and clearness of the 
work already on the canvas. However, he judged 
that it was not for him to cast cold water upon the 
pleasure of any artist, let alone a well-tried friend 
like Mr. Kent. Accordingly, — 

“You like it?” he offered non-committal query. 

David Kent smiled. 

“I am going to, Buddie, and that is rather more 
to the purpose. What is more, I think, in time, 
you’ll like it, too.” 

“I suppose so,” Buddie replied a little dubiously. 
“Anyhow, Mr. Kent, I promised that we’d see you 
through it, Ebenezer and I, and that appears to be 
our present job. But can’t I do anything more to 
get you ready ? ” 

“Yes, any amount; that is, if it isn’t too much 
trouble. You’re really very good to look out for 
me, Buddie.” 

“Good ! Me ! Mr. Kent, — ” Then Buddie choked 
back the finish of his phrase. As he had told 
Teresa, there were things he had to say to Mr. 
Kent. However, as yet neither the time nor Buddie’s 
courage were quite ripe for them. Buddie was as 


S48 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


downright as a boy is ever made; but there were 
certain phrases that did not come quite readily to 
him, phrases where his conscience had to supplement 
his will and break down his boyish reticence. 

It was a matter of some time to get the easel 
lowered to a convenient level, and to get Mr. Kent 
settled comfortably before it, his convalescent leg 
stuck out before him, and a choice array of tubes 
and brushes spread out on chairs and stools in easy 
reach. That done at last, however, Buddie whistled 
for Ebenezer who had been busy, digging an imagi- 
nary mole from the soil outside; then, after scrap- 
ing the thickest of the mud from Ebenezer’s paws 
and whiskers, Buddie sat himself down before the 
easel and sat Ebenezer down beside him. 

Then, for a while, silence descended on the tent. 
At first, it took all of Buddie’s efforts to convince 
Ebenezer that the claims of manners and high art 
bade him to forget the imaginary mole. After that, 
he disregarded Ebenezer totally, and fell to studying 
the artist before him, now painting busily and with 
strong, sure strokes that would have told a maturer 
critic than Buddie that the enforced rest, as so often 
happens, had gone to the betterment of his art, not 
to its weakening. While he painted, for the moment 
too absorbed in the delight of once more feeling 
himself at work to think even about Buddie, his gray 
eyes lost their indifferent look, that, at the first, 
had puzzled Buddie mightily. Instead, it was the 
likeness of an absolutely happy man, an eager and 
enthusiastic man, who sat before the easel, working 
with a vigourous realization of his own ability that, 
for the minute, made him quite unaware of Eben- 


BUDDIE EATS HUMBLE PIE 249 


ezer’s muddy whiskers, of his own leg stretched 
stiffly out before him, even of the boyish eyes fixed 
on his face with a mute question in their gray and 
honest depths. 

While the enthusiasm lasted, Buddie held his 
peace, although the rising colour in his cheeks and 
the bumping of his heart made him uncomfortably 
aware that he had a difflcult task before him. Then, 
at last, Ebenezer’s convulsive efforts to grasp and 
crush a flea, together with Buddie’s equally convul- 
sive efforts to restrain him: these broke the spell. 
The artist caught his breath, sighed a little and 
rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead. 

“Tired, Buddie?” he questioned cheerily. “Or 
only bored ? I’m sorry ; but it was so good to get 
back to work again that I quite forgot my duties as 
a host.” 

Buddie took a quick breath. Then he sought 
to steady himself by gripping Ebenezer’s left ear. 
As a natural result, Ebenezer whimpered, and the 
whimper was the last straw to break down Buddie’s 
long-gathering composure. 

“Oh, I say, Mr. Kent,” he blurted out; “you 
are a wonder, even if I didn’t use to think so.” 

The corners of the artist’s mouth curved upward. 
Like all of his brotherhood, he found praise sweet. 
Moreover, it was no especial wonder, all things 
considered, that he mistook his model’s meaning. 

“You like the picture so much ?” he queried. 

Buddie’s reply astounded him completely. 

“Picture be hanged!” he said. “I am talking 
about you.” 

“About me?” the artist echoed, in not unnatural 


250 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


surprise for, as a rule, he had found Buddie exceed- 
ingly averse to personal conversation. 

“Yes, you. Oh, thunderation ! I’ve gone and 
tackled the thing by the wrong horn,” Buddie ex- 
ploded, in mingled disgust and contrition. “I had 
a bully apology all ready for you, Mr. Kent; but 
I’ve bungled it now, till all I can do is to haul out 
my chunk of humble pie, and munch it in your 
presence.” 

David Kent laid down his brush. 

“I am sorry, Buddie; but, really, I am afraid — ” 

“I shouldn’t think you would,” Buddie told him 
frankly. “I shouldn’t, myself; and there is no 
reason you should know, till I told you. But I 
wanted to tell you. I thought it would sort of 
square things up. Daddy said I’d better not; but 
I told him I was going to. We’ll both feel better, 
once it’s over.” 

The artist’s face became attentive, less for the sake 
of grasping Buddie’s coming utterance, whatever it 
might be, than for the sake of watching the new 
Buddie who sat before him, a Buddie shorn of all 
his jauntiness, and only intent on making his mean- 
ing clear. 

“What is it, Buddie,” he asked kindly; “that 
you want to get over ?” 

Buddie’s face became almost as scarlet as his 
hair. 

“My two-sidedness,” he answered bluntly. “Mr. 
Kent, I haven’t been playing fair with you. You 
think I am friends with you ; but, when I first used 
to know you, I told Chub — really, I quite stuck to 
it — that you were an awful coward.” 


BUDDIE EATS HUMBLE PIE 251 


A little of the light died out of David Kent’s eyes. 
He had forgotten Buddie’s early attitude; it was 
not altogether pleasant to be reminded of it now. 
He smiled ; but the smile was not too jocular. And 
yet, he told himself, it was foolish to let the judge- 
ments of fourteen affect him so. . 

‘T am sorry,” he said, after a pause. 

“I’m sorrier,” Buddie told him downrightly. 
“I hadn’t any business to say a thing like that.” 

“But, if you think so — ” Mr. Kent was beginning. 

Buddie stared. Then he blazed. 

“Mr. Kent ! You don’t mean you think I think 
so now? Really, I’m not that sort. If I did, I 
wouldn’t be telling you; would I? Oh, dear!” 
Buddie dropped his red head on his fists and spoke 
dejectedly. “Daddy said I’d make a mess of it, 
and advised me to keep still. Mr. Kent 1” he sprang 
up and faced the artist, and, once on his legs, he 
felt that he could manage better with the theme of 
his apology. 

“Well?” 

“Now you just listen to me. What I started to 
say is this, only it came out all wrong. The night 
in the train, the night we had our smash, I set you 
down as being funky, a man that fainted dead away 
at sight of a little blood. Daddy said that you 
couldn’t help it; but that didn’t make me change 
my mind. Not that I cared to change it, then. 
But I’ve watched you, all this summer. I’ve seen 
you take risks, and do things I wouldn’t have done 
for any money. I’ve seen you keep your head in 
an accident that would have knocked most men 
silly. I’ve watched you shut your teeth on a pain 


m BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


that Daddy says must have been the worst ever, 
and never say a word to grumble or whimper. And 
then I’ve watched you stick it out without complain- 
ing, all those weeks you lay in bed, and didn’t be too 
sure which side of it you were coming out again. 
And I called you a coward, and Tom said you heard 
me. And, what was worse, I honestly believed 
that you were one, and, away down inside me, I 
laughed at you, whenever your back was turned. 
But talk about your heroes ! ” Buddie stopped in 
his tempestuous harangue, and drew a long, slow 
breath. Then he spoke deliberately, while his 
honest gray eyes met the eyes of the artist. “Mr. 
Kent, if you really are a coward, as I said you are, 
I think I wouldn’t much mind being one myself.” 


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 

TILL NEXT VACATION 

“TTUSH!” Hearn said. “She’s singing.” 

Xx But Buddie took the ^fact more temperately. 

“No need of hushing,” he remarked. “Teresa 
generally gets heard.” 

“H we listen.” 

“Anyhow,” Buddie said conclusively; and, in- 
deed, it seemed that he spoke the truth, for Teresa’s 
voice left little to the imagination, as she warbled 
from afar, — 

** Everybody kaows 
When the rooster crows 
That his heart is blithe and gay.** 

Hearn laughed, as the cataract of song fell on his 
ears. 

“Apparently she shares the feelings of the rooster,” 
he observed to Buddie. 

But Teresa, who seemed to be coming nearer to 
them, drowned out Buddie’s answer in her own 
vigorous crescendo, — 

“ — full of cheer 

That you*ll have to crow, each day. 

Hullo, Buddie ! Good morning, Mr. Hearn.” 

“Feeling extra cheerful, Teresa ?” Buddie queried. 

“ Wonderfully. I feel as if something good were go- 
ing to happen, something outside the usual course of 
things. Wiat are we going to do, to-day, Buddie ? ” 


254 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP, 

‘‘It’s up to you. I’m your man for anything.” 

“Ponies?” 

“If you say so.” 

Teresa’s cheer was punctuated with a little sigh. 

“Buddie, I am getting spoiled out here. All of 
a sudden, I am painfully aware that there won’t be 
any ponies for me to ride, when I get home. And 
it is so easy to get used to luxuries.” 

“Best make the most of them, then, while they 
do last,” Buddie told her. “I am going to miss 
Budge, too, when I go back to New York.” 

Teresa, now quite forgetful of her recent cheer, 
shook her head disconsolately. 

“There will be other things than Budge for me to 
miss, Buddie.” 

“Me, for instance?” the topographer asked 
hopefully. 

Teresa nipped his hope in the bud. 

“Mercy, no; not you,” she told him. “I left 
nine perfectly good brothers at home. In fact, I’ve 
a rather better supply of them than of anything else 
in the world.” 

“You’ll have your fill of them in just about ten 
days,” Buddie reminded her. 

Teresa clasped her hands, then swept them down- 
ward with a gesture that was not altogether happy. 

“Buddie,” she demanded; “am I a horrid little 
beast, that sometimes I dread the going back to them ? 
I love them dearly ; I miss them ; and yet — You see, 
this is the first time, since Eric came, that I haven’t 
had a baby brother on my conscience, and it has 
seemed rather good not to be worrying for fear some- 
thing is going to happen to him, the next minute.” 


TILL NEXT VACATION 


255 


Buddie looked up at her in sudden consternation. 
He could not know how homesick for the camp 
Teresa already had become, how homesick before 
she had even left it. And yet, a curious throb in 
her voice rendered him uneasy. 

“Teresa, you’re — ” 

“A pig,” she said, with a nervous little laugh. 
“Once I get home, though, I shall settle back into 
the old ways, Buddie. It is only that too good a 
time is bound to be demoralizing.” 

Buddie shook his head. 

“Good for you, though. Those boys, every one 
of them, used to take it out of you, from Eric with 
his earwigs to little Tootles with his teeth. It’s 
good for you to get away from it for a while, and 
leave them to look out for themselves. I only wish 
you could stay on, till we go back. Why can’t you ? ” 

“Mother expects me.” 

“Have you asked her if you could stay ? ” 

“Of course not,” Teresa told him simply. “I 
said I’d go back with Mrs. Munn, the fifteenth, and 
that is all there is about it.” 

“People change their minds.” 

“I don’t.” 

“Now don’t be pig-headed, Teresa,” Buddie ad- 
jured her. “You listen to me. Daddy and I and 
Chubbie will be going back, a little later. It would 
be any amount more sensible, if you waited and went 
back with us.” And Buddie swiftly outlined the 
advantages of his plan. “You see how it is, Teresa,” 
he ended suddenly. “Now will you write and ask 
your mother what she thinks ? ” 

“ She’ll think I ought to come, when I said.” 


256 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


“You can’t tell. She’d rather you came with us, 
I know. Anyhow, there’s time to get a letter back 
again. Won’t you j ust write and ask her ? ” 

And, before she went to bed, that night, Teresa 
did. 

In the meantime, she spent the morning afield with 
Buddie and the ponies, riding far up the cafion and 
home across the range where, at the topmost point 
of the divide, Hearn came dashing up to them, lonely, 
he said, and demanding their escort back to camp. 
Contrary to his energetic custom, too, he stayed in 
camp, all the afternoon, helping Buddie to outline 
their plans for the next day, plans which included 
their joining forces in season for luncheon. To be 
sure, Buddie, as fitted his autocratic habits where 
Teresa was concerned, amended the plans from 
start to finish; but the single item of their joint 
luncheon remained unchanged. 

Buddie was taking life most joyously, during those 
September days, for he was conscious that the worst 
of his responsibilities had fallen from him. The fu- 
ture connection with Chubbie made him feel free 
to neglect him somewhat in the present. Moreover, 
Mr. Kent was beginning to drop into his former in- 
dependent habits, although, as yet, he had yielded 
to Aunt Julia’s insistence and had delayed his re- 
turn to his own quarters. Best of all, the picture 
was done ; at least, so nearly that another sitting or 
two would finish it ; and Mr. Kent, quite of his own 
accord, had suggested leaving those sittings until 
after the departure of Teresa. 

To the mind of Buddie, looking backward, it 
seemed that the past two weeks had been chiefly sit- 


TILL NEXT VACATION 257 

tings. Only his ever-growing loyalty to Mr. Kent 
could have carried him through the ordeal; but he 
had borne the boredom and the loss of exercise most 
bravely, because it was David Kent who asked it, 
not David Kent, the famous artist, but the David 
Kent who could turn handsprings and keep a half a 
dozen coins flying in the air. As to the picture it- 
self, Buddie had vouchsafed it only the most casual 
glances. Daddy had seen it, though. He had 
stared at it for a long time, and then, in the fewest 
words possible, he had requested Mr. Kent to name 
his price for it. But Mr. Kent had watched it grow, 
and he knew that it was good. Moreover, he liked 
Buddie. Therefore he told a regretful Daddy that, 
for the present, the picture would not be for sale. 

Once Teresa’s letter was written and sent, Buddie 
settled to the calm belief that her longer stay in 
camp was an assured fact, and he built his plans ac- 
cordingly. His belief was so infectious that, by 
degrees, all the others accepted his way of thinking, 
while Aunt Julia surpassed them all in weaving the 
most elaborate plans for making the best of each one 
of the days before them. In her turn, she aroused 
her husband to the chances of the next week or two, 
roused him so thoroughly that, after an evening of 
discussion with his wife and Dr. Angell, an evening of 
consulting with certain of his own subordinates, he 
announced his intention of taking to the woods once 
more. This time, the trip would last a week; but, 
out of deference to Mr. Kent’s fast-vanishing in- 
firmities, they would go by easy stages and only over 
trails where it was possible for a pony cart to follow. 
They would go for sheer amusement, this time, not 


258 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


for business. They would choose their country care- 
fully, to get the best variety with the slightest effort ; 
and they would start immediately after luncheon, 
just three days later. 

‘T told you so!” Teresa said to Buddie, in a 
triumphant aside, just as they were starting off for 
bed, the night before. ‘T knew that something 
heavenly was going to happen. I didn’t care so 
much about the other trip ; but I can’t wait for this. 
I do wish it were morning, now.” And then, by 
way of hastening the coming of the dawn, she lay 
awake to count the hours until it came. 

Dawn did come at last, and then the morning, and 
then breakfast which brought them to within one 
meal of their time to start. Breakfast over, Buddie 
and Teresa, Hearn and Chubbie, gathered in the 
doorway of the dining tent to congratulate each other 
on the weather and on the brilliant prospects for 
their successful trip. They still were standing there, 
when a man came across the road from the station. 

“For you. Miss,” he said respectfully, as he handed 
an envelope to Teresa. 

She paled a little, while her fingers shut upon it. 
Telegrams had played a curiously small part in her life. 

“Oh, dear!” she said faintly. “I hope — ” 
And then she tore the envelope across. 

Buddie’s eye was on her, as she read. He saw 
her whiten, then turn to a dark red, while her eyes 
glittered suddenly. She swallowed once or twice, 
and shut her lips. Then, to his everlasting pride in 
her, he saw her rally sharply. 

“It might be lots worse, Buddie,” she said, as she 
handed him the paper. “It ends the trip for me; 


TILL NEXT VACATION 259 

but I’ve had about all the fun, this summer, that I 
can well digest.” 

“Oh, hang!” Then Buddie took the paper and 
read the night letter copied on it. 

“Can you come home sooner than you 'planned 
mother needs your help Eric has broken arm not bad 
break but makes care ask Mrs. MacDougall if she can 
find safe person for you to come 'with 

Father:^ 

“Hm !” Hearn said, as soon as Buddie had read 
the message. “That lets you out till after this trip, 
Teresa. Mrs. MacDougall can’t possibly find you 
an escort, before we start, this noon.” 

“I sha’n’t wait for any.” Teresa’s voice was very 
quiet ; but it held its own note of determination. 

“ V^at do you mean ? ” 

“That I shall start, to-night.” 

“ Alone ? You can’t.” 

Teresa lifted up her chin. Buddie, watching, 
gloried in the gesture. 

“Why not? I’m not a baby. I know the way 
perfectly; if I behave myself, nobody is going to 
molest me. Of course, I’d rather not go alone ; but 
it can’t well be helped.” 

Hearn sought to argue. 

“Anyway, you may as well wait till after our trip. 
You are out here, and it is too bad for you to miss 
the chance. A few days more or less aren’t going 
to make much difference.” 

Teresa’s chin arose a little higher. 

“But my mother needs me,” she said. “Besides, 
there’s Eric.” 


260 BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 


And Buddie, listening, albeit sorely disappointed, 
nevertheless came promptly to her support. 

In the end, Teresa carried her point as to the main 
question, although not in the lesser one. Not all 
of her coaxing could make the others start away 
without her. Instead, after an afternoon of pack- 
ing and of many telegrams, Teresa was escorted to 
the station by a small procession of her cronies, Bud- 
die and Ebenezer at the head of it, and Mr. Kent 
hobbling along at Hearn’s side, in the rear. Hearn 
was glum and silent. He had liked Teresa ; he knew 
that he was sure to miss her, and he thought he also 
knew that there was scanty chance of his ever meet- 
ing her again. The coming year, however, was 
destined to prove the inaccuracy of this latter know- 
ledge. As for Buddie, he was pensive, but not too 
depressed. Teresa’s home was not far from New 
York ; trains had been known to cross the distance. 
Moreover, even though they both were going home 
to be in school, they both were morally certain to 
have holidays, and wonderful things could happen 
during holidays. And yet, — 

“Teresa, it’s going to be lonesome without you,” 
he said, as they neared the station. 

She flung him a glance which, try as she would, 
she could not make cheerful, but only brave. 

“With Ebenezer, Buddie ?” 

His Angers tightened on Ebenezer’s collar; but 
his face was very sober. 

“Ebenezer isn’t you, Teresa.” 

“And Chubbie?” she added, a little bit of mis- 
chief downing the outer edges of her sadness. 

“ Chubbie ! But, Teresa — ” 


TILL NEXT VACATION ^61 


“Well?’’ 

“Do you feel as if we’d made the most of our 
summer?” 

She faced him squarely now, and her eyes looked 
steadily into his. 

“ It depends on what we mean by mosV^ 

“The best, then,” Buddie corrected himself 
gloomily. 

The train whistled in the distance, and Mr. Mac- 
Dougall gathered up the suitcases, for he was going 
with Teresa to the nearest junction. 

Teresa, however, as if deaf to the coming train, 
swept her eyes across the group upon the platform, 
to David Kent, to Chubbie, then brought them 
back to Buddie’s face. 

“The best?” she echoed. “Yes, Buddie, I do.” 
And then, as her hand shut hard on his, she added, 
“Besides, you know, it isn’t as if we hadn’t some more 
summers coming after this one.” 

And then, a minute later, Buddie was staring 
fixedly after the train, fast vanishing into the twilit 
distance. 

Chubbie fell into step beside him, as the little pro- 
cession wended its way home from the station. 

“I tell you, Buddie, she’s worth while,” he said 
quite briefly, and Buddie blessed him that he made 
no further effort after consolation. 

And, in his liking for the reticence, and in the gap 
which followed on Teresa’s going, Buddie was to 
turn with a new reliance, a new appreciation, to the 
comradeship of Chubbie Neal. 


THE END 


’v, 

' ■ V 'l ' ' , ' 


“ The Buddie Books ** 


BUDDIE : 

THE STORY OE A BOY 


By ANNA CHAPIN RAY 
Author of “ The Teddy Books,” “ The Sidney Books,” etc. 
Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards. $1.50 

That Miss Ray can write capital stories for girls, readers have 
long been pleasantly aware. That she can write for boys quite 
as acceptably, “Buddie,” the initial volume of “The Buddie 
Books affords abundant testimony. . . . The working of boy 
nature and girl nature is admirably contrasted in Miss Ray’s 
pages . — Boston Herald. 

Both boys and girls will be deeply interested in nearly 300 
pages briiuful with unexpected happenings. — Chicago Post. 

By the same author 

BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 

Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards. $1.50 


This is the second of “The Buddie Books,” and a story that 
will be heartily welcomed by the numerous boys and girls who 
have already made the a^uaintance of Buddie, his dog 
Ebenezer, and his girl chum Teresa Hamilton, all of whom, as 
well as Buddie’s father, his Aunt Julia and his friend Chubby 
Neal figure in it. Miss Ray’s new book tells what occurred in 
a happy summer vacation at Gray Buttes Camp, Aunt Julia’s 
new home. Among the main incidents are a railroad wreck on 
the way out, a timber-wolf hunt with “ Indian Bill,” three days 
camping out in the wilderness, and a canoe trip. The story is 
full of Hie best sort of entertainment. 


LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers 
34 Beacon Street, Boston 


The Henley Schoolboys* Series 


AN AMERICAN BOY 
AT HENLEY 


By FRANK E. CHANNON 
Illustrated by H. Burgess. Cloth. $1.50 

Frank E. Channon has done quite a brilliant thing 
in discovering a new setting for a schoolboy story. A 
capital story of a lad from the United States at a big 
English public school. — Springfield Republican, 

By the same author 

JACKSON AND HIS HENLEY FRIENDS 
Illustrated by H. Burgess. Cloth. $1.50 

Just enough adventure mixed in with the everyday 
routine of school life to redeem the monotony without 
encouraging the taste for too much excitement. An im- 
proving as well as an entertaining story. — Chicago Tribune, 

By the same author 

HENLEY’S AMERICAN CAPTAIN 
Illustrated by Wm. Kirkpatrick. $1.50 

The third volume in the popular series deals with 
Roger Jackson’s experiences in his final year at a large 
English School. A clever athlete, and the most popular 
boy in the sixth form, the young American is elected 
captain of the school, and in this position has some dif- 
ficult problems to solve. 


LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers 
34 Beacon Street, Boston 






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